My Friends Are Dead People (27 page)

I glanced over Katie, making sure she was
okay. Apart from some dirt and a cut on her arm, she was fine.

“
Jack was going to take
us,” I said to her.

“
I know.”

“
Where’s Jacoby? Didn’t he
lift us up?”

“
No, Cosqué did. Jacoby
is–”

“
Where’s
Jacoby?”

“
Jesse, Jacoby is
hurt.”

“
What?” I blurted, only
now looking up at the top of the path, where Cosqué was standing
over Jacoby.

I hastily scrambled up to them. Jacoby was
lying on his back. His eyes were blackened and half-shut, and
webbed creases crossed his face and arms. He looked like he was
dying. I dropped to my knees.

“
He’s okay,” said Katie
calmly. “He said–”

“
What do you mean he’s
okay?
” I yelled. “
Look at him!
”

“
He said he was okay,”
continued Katie, unfazed by my shouting. “He ran into a web that
drains your vitality. He’ll recover in a minute.”

I wasn’t really listening to her, and didn’t
really care what she had to say. The sadness in Jacoby’s eyes told
me he wasn’t okay.

“
Jacoby?” I murmured.
“We’re going to get you out. Where’s Dorian?”

“
We don’t know,” said
Cosqué.

“
I wasn’t talking to you!”
I said coldly. “You left us!”

“
I didn’t. I watched my
family being slaughtered. I didn’t leave anyone.”

“
Jesse, we don’t know
where Dorian is,” said Katie. “We couldn’t find him. We think he
might be where the attack is happening.”

“
We’ve got to find him,” I
said. “We have to get out of here.”

“
He blocked off every
entrance,” stated Cosqué. “There is no way out.”

I turned down to Jacoby. His eyes were
wider. “Jacoby, what do we do?”

Cosqué put Jacoby’s arm over his shoulder
and helped him up. “He wants us to find a secure location,”
informed Cosqué.

“
We have to stick
together,” I said.

“
Yes.”

I checked Katie’s watch.

11:37 PM

“
Dorian?” whispered Meesi
far behind us. “Where are you? We are… I don’t know where we
are.”

I hurried back to her. “You can talk to
him?”

“
Please, Dorian,” she went
on. “We have to get out of here.”

Everyone turned around. Meesi lifted her
head and gave us a distressed look. “I can’t reach him.”

“
We’ve tried,” said
Cosqué, turning Jacoby around to look at him. He was looking worse.
Something was very wrong. His glassy eyes drifted to the back of
his head as everything around us went black. . . .

CHAPTER
TWENTY

The HIDDEN
FOREST

I felt alive. I wasn’t sore or tired,
actually feeling refreshed, as if I had just woken up from a long
nap. The air was moist and clean. I was in the middle of a giant
forest. I had made it out of the mountain.

Hundreds and hundreds of mythical tree
trunks fortressed the vast land. The treetops were like clouds of
green, shielding the ground from a smoldering sun. Drips of warm
water from the highest branches splashed into the streams that
weaved between the trees like the grooves and creases on my
palm.

On the bank of the nearest stream, a small
doe was nibbling on a piece of bark. Peace was all-encompassing.
Birds twittered and chirped musically while a snake slithered down
the vines hanging off of a small tree. Perhaps this was a
dream–

I felt something nipping at my foot and
flinched. As I looked down, expecting to see my feet, I saw two
paws. . . .

I tried to speak but a growl came out
instead. The doe retreated a little.

It can’t
be
. I brought my hand up to my eyes and
discovered a thick furry paw with a callused sole. It wasn’t just a
paw. It was
my
paw.

The doe stared at me with her soulful black
eyes. I growled, and the doe pranced backwards, frightened.

I thought really hard,
trying to fathom this situation. What was a tiger? Was I stupid now
that I was one?
One plus one is
. . . What was the answer? Five? What was five
anyway? I seemed to recall it was a letter. Well, at least I
remembered that much.

I’m stupid!
I cried dumbly.

I yelled in frustration, and again only a
deep roar came out, which made me remember everything about today.
I was just with Katie, Jacoby, Meesi, and Cosqué inside the
mountain. No, I wasn’t dreaming, which probably meant I was either
dead or – what’s worse – reincarnated.

I
. . .
can’t
. . .
be
.
. .
I thought, which required a lot of
effort. . . .
a tiger
.
I don’t want to be
dead
.

Katie’s voice rang in my head. “Jesse!”

Katie, where are
you?
I thought.
I
can’t see you
.

“
Jesse, right in front of
you.”

I looked at the
doe.
Katie?
I
thought painfully.

“
You’re a tiger,” I heard
her say, but her lips didn’t move. “Where are we?”

I don’t
know
, I thought to her.

“
Jesse, follow me, I found
something.”

Katie sprang off into the darker part of the
forest, skipping gracefully through a shallow stream. I could
immediately tell that I could easily run faster than her. My paws
and legs felt strong, like I could kill someone with one swipe. I
almost smiled, but then ran into an invisible wall. I shook my
head, not carrying what it was, and continued after her. I hoped
she was taking me to get some food because I was getting really
hungry.

Her long elegant neck snapped to the side,
and her eyes bulged. Katie darted off to the side and took cover
behind a tree.

“
Jesse!” her voice
sounded. “What you doing?”

What was she talking about? I went around
the tree and didn’t find her. I ran everywhere: searching under
logs, behind trees, inside a mess of roots. I even plunged my head
into the stream. Exhausted, I stopped to gnaw on a piece of mossy
wood. If I didn’t eat something soon, I was going to die.

But where did Katie go? And why did she just
leave me here when she wanted to show me something?

“
Jesse, up here?” echoed
her voice.

Katie was high up in a tree, standing atop a
thick branch, wobbling and straining to maintain her balance. I
placed my claws on the tree and started to climb.

“
No!” her voice painfully
reverberated inside my eardrum.

But I thought you wanted to show me–

“
You just stay
there.”

Why was Katie so scared? Her slim legs
jittered.

You’re going to
fall
.
Come
down.

“
No, I don’t want
to.”

She nudged a chunk of wood off the branch
and it hit me right in the head, which didn’t faze me at all. I
roared loudly.

“
Jesse! Look at
it!”

I looked at the wood.

JaCk

I was sure that name meant something.

“
Jack transformed us,” I
heard her say.

I finally recalled the
name.
No, that’s not possible. Is
it?

“
He’s a prankster, Jesse.
Maybe Jacoby’s here, too.”

Jacoby? Who’s that?

“
Jesse, you’re stupid.
Jacoby’s our friend.”

Oh. Are you going to come
down?
I carried on.
Why are you staying up there?

“
I told you, I don’t wanna
come down.”

I couldn’t believe she was acting like this.
If she fell and injured herself, I wasn’t going to give her any
sympathy.

“
Where you
going?”

To go look for some food.
I’ll be back
.
If
you decide to come down, wait for me, okay?

I couldn’t believe how fast I could run. Not
like the welgos, but a lot faster than I could ever run before. I
wasn’t so sure anymore that I wanted to turn back into a human,
even if I could. I roared, unable to contain my excitement, but
then came to a sliding halt as I realized exactly what I was
thinking. I didn’t want to be a tiger forever. I wanted to be with
Oz and Katie and everyone else. I wanted to be human.

Katie?
I called, turning around, forgetting she was still in the
tree. Just then, an arrow whistled through the air and sank into my
side.

Light-brown eyes peered at me through the
bushes on the other side of the stream. I couldn’t believe someone
had just shot me. The eyes withdrew, and a very tan man with a
painted face jumped out from behind the bushes. The native was
wearing only a loincloth, a brown bandana, and a necklace of beads.
He kept his bow and arrow pointed directly at me as he approached.
I was feeling sick, and my vision was beginning to blur. I vaguely
saw Katie standing in the stream. The man sauntered over to her,
and she sadly stepped back.

“
Jack’s trying to have us
kill each other,” she cried to him. “I don’t know who you are, but
you’re not a native here. Jesse, I’ll get help.”

The Indian stumbled back, having understood
everything she had said.

Hurry!

As I strained my blurry vision, a rock wall
came into view. I squinted at it, but it turned out to be a mossy
burrow. I noticed that my left eye and my right eye were now seeing
different things: one could see rocks, falling debris, and the
human Katie while the other registered only the forest and
everything else in it. I closed one eye and saw an yslas.

Katie, something strange
is happening
.

I dropped my head, resting it against the
wet soil. Katie brought her head down to mine so I could see
her.

The Indian is
Cosqué
.

Katie turned to the Indian. “Cosqué, it’s
me, Katie.”

Katie
, I thought, now finally understanding.
We’re still there
.
We’re still in the mountain
.

Everything shifted, melted and morphed. We
were once again inside the tunnel. The refreshing tropical breeze
was replaced by dank musty odor and the harmonious sounds of the
forest were drowned out by rumbling and explosions.

I was my normal human self again. I looked
down and saw no arrow pierced in me. Katie and Cosqué were also
back to their regular selves.

“
Where are Jacoby and
Meesi?” I asked promptly.

“
I don’t know,” said
Katie.

Cosqué recovered as quickly as we did and
led us to a warm chamber that had a ceiling covered with hundreds
of brown bats. “He’s playing tricks on us,” he said. “He’ll soon–”
He saw Meesi kneeling over Jacoby. “Is he doing better?”

“
I think so,” said
Meesi.

Jacoby did in fact look better. His eyes
were fully open and he looked calm and alert. Cosqué helped him
up.

“
I was the squirrel,”
Jacoby told Katie and me. “Meesi was just about to finish me
off.”

Meesi frowned.

“
That’s okay, Meesi, you
didn’t know–”

A giant rolling jolt shook the room. All of
us remained quiet as the tremor passed by. Jacoby stepped away from
Cosqué and slowly shuffled to the other end of the room. A
sickening noise was coming from that direction. It was the sound of
the tortics dropping through a hole in the ceiling. They looked
horrible. The first one I saw had blood coursing down its entire
body. Another limped badly on a disfigured leg. Lorseria had a gash
in his arm, and his whole left side was charred. He viciously
trampled a fallen tortic who had lost both of his eyes and snarled
something in German at him.

CHAPTER
TWENTY-ONE

JACK O
’LANTERN

With a single wave of Lorseria’s hand,
Jacoby was shackled to the ground. The room lit up in blazing
colors, as if dozens of fireworks went off at once. This was
Cosqué’s doing. The tortics easily sidestepped the sparkling jets
and sent his own spell speeding back at him. Lorseria stepped
through Cosqué’s force field and thrust his claws into Cosqué’s
stomach, instantly sending him tumbling to the ground.

“
Almost,” Lorseria
informed us, watching us instead of Cosqué, whose body was rapidly
decaying. A few seconds later there was nothing left but some bones
and ashes. “Drop them in the hole and curse the entrance. Meesi
comes with us.”

“
Lorseria, there’s no way
out,” explained Jacoby.

“
There is–” He coughed.
“Meesi, get up.”

Meesi got up despondently, and Katie and I
were pulled through Cosque’s scattered bones, which made me
queasy.

“
Don’t take me to him,”
cried Meesi, pulled along by Lorseria. “Please. I’ll do anything.
Jacoby, I don’t want to be taken to him.”

“
Lorseria, we have to all
stay together,” reasoned Jacoby.