The Curse of Arkady (23 page)

Jason thought about that, then shook his head. “No, because something lived there . . . it just didn't explode out of nowhere.”

Trent drummed his fingers on the side of his leg. “Don't tell me this is one of those ‘if a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, does it still make a sound' conversations? 'Cause I swore I'd never get into that.”

Jason nodded. “Close, huh? But seriously, I thought I'd fallen into
Star Wars
or something. And whatever it was, it was real.” He showed his arm to Trent.

“That's like a burn.” Trent grimaced in sympathy.

“Hurts like it, too. I'll have to put something on it later. And I couldn't breathe for all the ammonia or whatever.” He took another deep breath and it felt good, California smog or not. “Ready to go again?”

“Sure. I've got the easy part, I just sit here and wonder where you disappeared to.” Trent grinned at him.

“Won't be so easy if I disappear for good. You'd have a lot of explaining to do.”

Trent's smile faded, and he looked solemnly at Jason. “Just don't do that.”

“Right. I won't.” They both knew it might not be that easy, but it was reassuring to make it sound that way. Jason put his hand on Trent's shoulder, cupped his crystal, and found a new facet, a new angle inside its beauty to focus upon. Within a moment, he saw a threshold, and stepped through. . . .

 

Nighttime. Wild countryside. Late autumn chill in the frosted ground below his feet, and Jason shivered in his short-sleeved shirt. A moon overhead lay very low in the sky, just barely clearing the treetops, like a great yellow pumpkin, and he marveled at it for a moment, so large and clear. It seemed larger than any harvest moon he'd ever seen before. He took a halting breath, carefully, but it smelled only of the night, a little moist. Some faint night flower perfumed it along with the scent of the grass and trees, and there was the chill of the crackling frost on the ground. He had a sensation of dream time and shook it off. This was real. This was no dream where all he had to do was wake up to return to reality. What existed here could and would hurt him if it seemed dangerous.

Still and all, this was promising. From the brilliance of the many stars in the sky, he realized there were no city lights nearby to diffuse their strength. No traffic sounds or noise reached him. It was not quiet, by any means; he could hear the rattle of tree branches and the chirp of many crickets, and the sound of a brook flowing nearby. The nightscape was rocky and rather bare, but it was obviously nearing winter. Many of the trees were leafless, their branches shaking in a slight night breeze. He looked about, trying to imagine what it would be like to have a Haven here. They could bring a tent, perhaps, something salvaged from one of the family garages, and pitch it permanently.

It might do. It might indeed. Smiling, Jason turned around and started off over a little knoll to get a better look around. His foot hit a stone, and it rolled downhill a bit, then bounced off a boulder, and clattered noisily down a slope where he felt the brook might be. It sounded louder than it was, because there wasn't much other noise around to muffle it. He didn't hear a splash follow it, though. A few more clatters echoed as if smaller pebbles had also been dislodged and were rattling down the incline.

Then silence fell. Complete and total silence. The crickets stopped. The wind held its breath. And Jason felt a stab of fear.

A howl sounded from not very far away. Another joined it, and then a third.

Jason turned slowly. His blood went icy with recognition. It seemed he had been unlucky enough to find the world which was home to wolfjackals! He raced back to the spot at which he'd opened the Gate, and palmed his crystal, seeking Trent's anchoring presence.

It was there, but thready, fading in and out like a cellular phone transmission with a battery going dead. He could feel his friend, and then he could not, all faint and watery feeling. He didn't know much about Gates except that they had a very real base and he couldn't run, or he'd lose this one. And if he didn't run, the wolfjackals were likely to pull him down!

The howls grew stronger in the night, and he looked across the ridge. By the light of the low, yellow moon, he could see three massive wolfish bodies racing fast across the disk's illumination. Another few jumps and he would be able to see their ivory fangs gleaming in their jaws, altogether way too close!

Jason rubbed his crystal. He tore his gaze from the ridge and looked down into his crystal, barely visible in the evening, his hands shaking. The scar on his left hand began to throb painfully, almost a match for the burn on his right arm. If only Trent could focus, too, from his side.

But his friend couldn't, and suddenly Jason questioned his suitability for what Jason had chosen him to do. He should have waited for Bailey. Or even Rich and Stefan. Anyone but someone with no Magick. He drew his crystal close, his breath exhaling in a white mist about it.
Just think, Trent, harder and harder—or I'm going to lose you and . . . me!

His hands trembled, and he dropped his quartz. It bounced into the stiff and spare grasses about his feet and abruptly winked out of sight. Jason dropped to his knees, searching frantically. Nothing met his touch. He ran his hands through the brittle, frost-dried tangled grasses and found nothing. Chilled and dirty, he began to search even more desperately. Wonderful if it had bounced away and he didn't hear it.

Howls rippled nearer. He wouldn't look up. He was lost without his crystal, and it didn't matter if the wolfjackals got him or not then. Panic began to well up in him. He had to find it. It had to be here somewhere. He dug across the shale and grass tufts frantically.

Nothing. Gone. It was gone.

It couldn't be gone. He'd
feel
it if it was gone. Like . . . like a hole in himself or something.
Think, Jason, think.

At camp when they'd been introduced to the crystals, the tables had been covered with trays. Crystals, quartzes and rocks of all kind were laid out, and they'd been told to look them over very carefully, and not touch unless very very sure of what they were doing. His had held a kind of warmth that drew him, a fuzzy kind of tingle.

He wasn't just looking for any ordinary rock in the dark. Jason took a breath to steady himself and calm his racing thoughts and put his hand out, palm down, and tried to feel for his crystal. That faint warmth that was for him and him alone.

A chorus of howls nearby shattered the air again. He could hear their hot pants, the click of their nails on the rocky slope as they bounded up. Something warm grazed his fingers, he grabbed for it.

Jason blinked in surprise. Crystal it was, but not
his
crystal. This was bigger, and absolutely transparent, with a bold lavender color to it that shone in the dark. How he'd not seen it before, he couldn't tell. Before he could stand in puzzlement, his other hand found a steady warmth and reached for his own crystal, secure, wrapped in fallen autumn leaves and damp from lying on the ground.

He turned, a crystal in each hand and made fists, as the wolf-jackals bore down on him. It was now or never for him to find Trent. Otherwise, he would have to open another Gate and just fall through.

He squeezed his hands. Trent's tuneless humming filled his mind. With a shout of relief, Jason anchored on him and pulled through just as the first wolfjackal leaped.

T
RENT blinked as Jason tumbled to the grass in front of him, pale almost beyond belief, arms stiff at his sides with his hands knotted into fists. He bent over his friend immediately and felt the icy cold radiating from him. Jason smiled stiffly up at him, teeth chattering, lips blue around the edges.

“Oh, man,” Trent breathed. “That doesn't look good at all! Come on, come on, get up!” He pulled Jason to his feet, half-surprised his clothes didn't explode into frozen splinters. Jason continued to shake, jaws clattering, and he hugged himself as if trying to hold what little warmth remained inside him. “In the house. Come on.” He pushed and pulled at Jason, got him upstairs—thank goodness the inquisitive sister and overachieving stepmom were out at some lesson or other—and he steered Jason up to the trapdoor ladder leading to the attic bedroom.

Once there, Jason toppled over onto the bed. Trent piled blankets and quilts on top of him. He ran downstairs and microwaved a steaming cup of hot tea, raced back up and fed it to Jason who tried to sip it, shaking so hard he spilled more of it than he drank and finally waved the mug away. Trent plunked down at the computer desk, and watched. It got worse, until Jason shook all over with helpless chills, but the color slowly came back to his face, and he finally stopped shaking. He melted into his bed, and unclenched his teeth, and drew his hands out, uncurling his fingers slowly. He sat up, and not one but two crystals fell from his fists onto the coverlet.

They both stared in astonishment.

“I . . . I . . . d-d-d-didn't imagine it,” Jason got out.

“Two crystals? How'd you manage that? And what happened? You stumble onto Antarctica or something?”

“N-n-n-nothing like that.” Jason stumbled onto his feet, and the two brilliant crystals tumbled to the bedroom carpet. “Did they come through with me?”

“The rocks? Yeah. We were just talking about that.” Trent stared, baffled. He pushed Jason gently back onto the bed. “Just sit there till you warm up. I'm not so sure you're not in shock or something.”

“N-n-no. I'm fine. I d-d-didn't know I was so c-c-cold.” Jason pulled his blankets tighter around him. He reached out and picked up his own crystal, shoving it deep into his pocket, and then picked up the second. Crystalline, completely transparent, with a faint, pure lavender color throughout its many facets. He held it so that Trent could see it, too. “Look at this.”

“I'm looking.” Trent sighed faintly. A slight note of envy crept in, and he flushed a little.

Jason said immediately, “I'm sorry.”

“Don't be. You didn't do anything. Where'd you find it? Are you Bonded, do you think? It
is
one of those rocks, isn't it?”

“I think so, and it was there, where I was. The Gate area looked like Earth this time, only out in the country, the wilderness. Nighttime, and out on the . . . the . . .” Jason tried to search for a word to fit the landscape. “Moors? Countryside. Slopes and rock and trees gone to winter. Everything very dark and still, with this huge harvest moon hanging in the sky. It looked really promising until I heard the wolfjackals. And then I dropped my crystal.”

Trent looked stunned. “No way.”

“I couldn't find it in the dark.” Jason inspected his hands. They looked like he'd been digging in the dirt, grubby and scuffed and even bruised. “I combed the ground . . . I could hear them coming after me, howling, running across the hill.”

“They knew you were there?”

“They always do.” Jason shuddered. “I didn't think I'd make it back.”

“What did you do?”

“I stopped trying to dig out . . . my crystal has a warmth. I decided to find that, you know? And it came to me. This strange one. I found it first, then the other, but they both just kind of answered me. One minute I had nothing, the next I had two.” Jason held the lavender gem out to Trent.

He took it carefully. It hadn't been polished or faceted, but it looked like a handful of faintly purple diamond. “This could be valuable. Some gemstones are priceless, like diamonds.” It held no heat for him. Disappointed, he passed it back. “You look better. Warming up?”

“Yeah.” He bounced the new crystal in his hand for a moment. “I could hardly feel you. I don't think I would have made it back without this second one.”

“Really?”

Jason nodded.

“Awesome.”

Jason laughed then. “You're stupid.”

Trent grinned. “Hey! You made it back. Don't complain!”

“Yeah, yeah. I'll have to show this to Gavan, see what he thinks of it. It could be I am bonded.”

“And the problem with that is . . . ?”

Jason looked at him. “It came from the Haven where wolfjackals roam. I've no idea what kind of energy it could hold . . . who might have had it before. Think about it, Trent. This could be big trouble.”

They both looked at it in solemn silence. Trent finally broke the silence. “I don't think,” he stated, “that anything about you could be evil.” He cleared his throat. “Some people just have this quality about them. You're one of 'em. You can't even tell a lie to save yourself.” He stopped awkwardly, then started again. “Now Bailey, on the other hand, would cheerfully kill both of us if we missed the party.”

Jason's jaw dropped. “The party! I nearly forgot it. Let me get cleaned up and then go find Dozer for our ride.” He shed the blankets and comforter like a cocoon, and the two of them tumbled downstairs.