Underworlds #1: The Battle Begins (2 page)

“D
ANA
!” I
KNEELED AND HAMMERED MY FISTS ON
the solid floor, while the school bell ending homeroom jangled on and on. Classrooms emptied, and kids and teachers crowded the hall.

My brain was spinning.

What had just happened was … impossible! Had anyone else seen it? Was it just me?

Then I noticed what Dana had thrown at me. Her house key.

Seriously? She wants me to go to her house? To find the book she talked about?

Footsteps pounded toward me. I turned.

It was Jon. “Are you okay? The lights in the whole school blinked out for a second. It was so weird!”

“No,” I said. My mouth was dry, and my voice sounded funny.

“It
wasn’t
weird?”

“I mean I’m not okay,” I said, pointing to the floor. I wasn’t sure why, but I lowered my voice, so no one else would hear me. “Dana vanished … down there!”

Jon looked at me, then at my feet, then at me again. “Where?”

“Through the floor!” I whispered. “She went
through
the floor! She disappeared! A hole opened up, and she fell into it!”

Jon’s jaw dropped. “Mr. Kenkins is going to be so mad. He’s too old to fix stuff like that. He even gets tangled in the flagpole ropes —”

I grabbed Jon by the shoulders and gave him a shake. “Jon. Focus. I just saw Dana vanish through the floor! One second she was here, and the next …
poof!
”

Jon breathed out, was quiet for a minute, then nodded. “I get it. I mean, I don’t
get
it. But I know you, Owen. When you say something, you mean it. What are we going to do?”

That was the thing about Jon. It was sometimes hard to get his attention. But if you did, he was with you a hundred percent.

“Stand right here,” I said, pointing to the floor tiles. “I’m going downstairs. Do not move from this spot.”

Jon frowned. “This spot? You want me to stand on the spot where Dana vanished? Is that safe?”

“I’ll be right back!” I ran to the end of the hall and jumped three steps at a time to the lower level. I knew that there was nothing under the hall except the boiler room, which was always locked, but I had to look.

It didn’t help. “Dead end,” I said to myself, pounding on the iron door.

My heart thudded as I ran back upstairs. Students and teachers were everywhere now, stepping around Jon, who was on his hands and knees examining the floor tiles. Tapping her foot on the tiles next to him was a really pale girl with short black hair. She was holding a fire extinguisher.

“Owen, this is Sydney Lamberti,” said Jon. “She’s a transfer. Her dad’s the new shop teacher. She’s a real techie. Plus, she smelled smoke.”

“You smelled smoke?” I asked the girl. “There was fire. I saw fire coming up from below —”

“I saw it, too,” she said. “I was coming around the corner and saw the flames. I freaked out and ran for the fire extinguisher.”

“You saw Dana vanish?” I asked her, relieved that I wasn’t the only one.

“I saw it, but I don’t believe it. Either way,” she said, shaking her head, “we should tell someone. The principal. Better yet, let’s file a missing person’s report. I can do it right now.” She pulled out her cell phone.

That’s when I remembered. “No!” I grabbed her arm. “Dana told me not to tell anyone. There’s some big thing happening. Monsters or something. I know, it’s nuts. But she was really scared. And I heard a voice. It said, ‘The battle begins ….’”

“Uh-oh,” said Jon. “Not good.”

“There were a whole lot of eyes staring at me from below,” I said, shivering as I remembered them. “And something shiny …”

Sydney shook her head. “Maybe it was a surge of electricity followed by an earthquake. I mean, people just don’t disappear like that —”

“Except that we both saw it,” I interrupted.

“I know,” Sydney said, placing the fire extinguisher next to the wall. “But what can we do about it?”

I felt Dana’s house key in my hand. “Dana said there’s a book in her house. She gave me her key. She lives near where the concert is this morning. We could slip away ….”

I looked from Jon to the new girl, hoping they were with me.

“Hey, I’m totally in,” said Jon. “You know that. Dana’s our friend.”

Sydney peered at the key in my hand, then at Jon, then at me. She took a breath and said, “I guess I’m in, too. Except that I’m not in the band.”

“Do you play an instrument?” Jon asked.

“Gong,” she said. “My dad helped me make a gong in shop. Out of bronze.”

“You’re in the band now!” Jon said.

W
E COLLECTED OUR INSTRUMENTS
— S
YDNEY’S
gong was a small one she carried in her backpack, anyway — and jammed ourselves into the bus with the other band kids. As we drove away from school, I tried to stay calm. But like everything else that had happened since I woke up, staying calm was impossible, too.

“Guys,” I whispered, “something seriously crazy is going on here. Dana knew she was in danger. I saw it in her eyes. She was terrified.”

“Okay, you and I saw her disappear. Fine,” said Sydney. “But disappear to where?”

I hadn’t even let myself think about
where
. All I could do was shake my head. “I don’t know. Somewhere dark. With zillions of eyes and a creepy voice.” Not so helpful.

“Which makes it even more important to find the book,” said Jon.

When we climbed out at the college, the wind was picking up and the sky was filling with clouds. We pretended to be busy looking through our bags as the other kids hurried into the auditorium to set up for the concert. Soon the bus drove away, and we were alone on the sidewalk.

“So … where’s Dana’s house?” asked Sydney.

I turned to the north. “There. On the hill,” I said.

No one noticed as we made our way past the old brick buildings to a high front yard across the street from campus. I’d been to the Runsons’ house quite a few times over the years. It was two hundred years old, four stories high, and had nine gables and dozens of very tall windows.

Jon breathed out. “This place is haunted.”

“No such thing,” said Sydney, as we climbed the steps. “But I think that we should do this quickly. In and out.”

“Maybe I could do the
out
part now,” said Jon. “I’ll wait out here while you go in?”

“Nice try, but no,” I said. I pulled Dana’s key from my pocket. The moment I turned the key and pushed the door in, a wave of frigid air swept over us.

Jon stepped back. “Whoa, Iceland much?”

“Dana’s parents both teach Icelandic stuff,” I said. “Dana told me she knew the real reason her parents went to Iceland. Whatever that means.”

“You mean
not
for research?” asked Jon.

I shrugged. “I don’t know.” I was saying that a lot.

We stepped inside, and the cold surrounded us.

“They probably just turned off the heat for while they’re away,” said Sydney, being practical. I was learning that was her thing. “It also smells like animals.” She wrinkled her nose.

The deeper into the house we went, the colder it got. It felt as if the rooms were refrigerated. The walls glittered with a fine coating of frost. If it hadn’t been so dark, we probably would have seen icicles hanging from the door frames. Our breath hung like fog in front of us.

The Runsons had just left today, so how did it get so cold so fast?

“We should be really quick about this,” said Sydney, rubbing her arms.

We searched from room to room. Dining room. Living room. Bedrooms. Kitchen. Sheets crusted with frost were draped over the furniture to keep the dust off. They looked like dead bodies. I tried not to be creeped out.

We found no obviously important books anywhere until we entered the Runsons’ home office. It was pitch-black, no windows. Feeling around, I found the light switch and flicked it on. A single lamp glowed, putting the far corners of the room in shadow. But we saw what we needed to.

“Uh-oh,” said Jon.

The library was lined with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. At the very top was a high shelf filled with big old vases and pots that looked like they belonged in a museum.

“This will be easy.” Sydney snorted as she pulled a leather-bound book from a shelf. “There must be a million priceless books here. How are we supposed to find the right one?”

“Dana told me I’d know it,” I said. “There’s something about it that’s different from the others.” But I had no idea what.

We started looking through one book after another. Most of them were written in other languages. Some had letters I couldn’t recognize, some had painted pictures. Others were so old, they felt like they might crumble in our hands. There was one shelf with a gap between the books as if one had been pulled out. I hoped that wasn’t the book Dana needed.

Just as I was beginning to feel helpless, I turned. And I let out a slow white breath.

“What is it?” asked Jon.

A large desk stood in the shadows at the end of the room.

“I read a story once where there was a clue to the mystery in a desk,” I said, stepping across the carpet to it. Like the walls, the desk was covered in a film of speckled frost. And it was very neat — pens, ink pots, pencil cups, stacks of paper — everything in its place. A clay bowl of paper clips stood off to one side. In with the clips was a small brass key. Stepping back from the desk, I saw that one of the drawers had a brass lock.

Sydney saw it, too. “Way too obvious.”

“But worth a try,” Jon said, bouncing on his toes. “Anything to get out of here.”

The key was cold when I picked it up from the bowl. I slipped it into the lock and turned it.
Ping!
The drawer popped out, and my breath caught in my throat. Inside the drawer was a very used copy of a very fat paperback book:
Bulfinch’s Mythology
.

“Mythology?” Jon said. “You mean like ogres and unicorns?”

“More like gods and monsters,” Sydney said. “When I was little, my parents read me those stories. Do you think this is the book Dana was talking about?”

“It’s not like the other books on the shelves. It’s cheap,” I said. I peeled back the cover and saw Dana’s name written inside. “Why would she keep it locked up here and not in her room?”

“Maybe
she
didn’t keep it locked up,” Sydney said. “Maybe her parents did. To protect it? Maybe —”

Grrrrr
.

Jon froze. “I think we woke the dog ….”

GRRR!
The growling was louder.

“They don’t have a dog,” I said quietly. My hands and feet were numb. I couldn’t tell if it was from the cold, or from the fear that shot through me.

A massive
thing
rose up from the shadows. And up and up. Its head alone was the size of a dog. Then it bared its teeth … only they weren’t just teeth. They were fangs — long and curved and dripping thick goop. The thing’s eyes were deep and black. It wasn’t a dog.

It was a wolf.

Some kind of crazy extra-large wolf with spiky bristles of red fur sticking out like bent wire. The giant beast just stared at us, heaving out the foulest frozen breath imaginable.

Jon flattened against the shelves. “Please let this be a dream. And I wake up far away —”

RRRAAOOO!
Flames shot out of the beast’s jaws as it leaped high over our heads and landed by the library door. It slammed the door shut, and the house echoed —
doom-doom-doom!
We were trapped.

Scrambling backward, I tripped over Jon’s feet and fell to the floor. Maybe I was dizzy with fear, but from that angle the bookshelves looked like only one thing.

A ladder.

Without thinking, I leaped up and swung my arms across the top of the desk. Bowls, pens, paper, everything flew at the wolf.

“Up the shelves!” I cried.

In the second it took for the giant wolf to dodge the junk, we clambered up the dark wooden shelves.

The wolf roared fire again, then jumped at us. I hurled a heavy book at its head. With a cry of pain, the wolf tumbled backward.

We clawed our way up to the top shelf. I heaved one of the vases down over my shoulder. So did Jon. The wolf dodged mine, but Jon’s caught it on the snout. It shot another blast of fire.

“There’s a heating vent in the corner,” Sydney said, grabbing my arm and then pointing.

We crawled across the top shelf to the corner, where an ornate grille stood in the wall. Jon and I kept dropping vases and pots at the wolf, while Sydney pulled a tiny screwdriver from her backpack and began to unscrew the grate.

“Shop teachers’ daughters are always prepared,” she said under her breath.

The wolf roared again, and the lower shelves burst into flame.

“Sydney!” I cried.

“Got it,” she said. She yanked out the grille, threw it over her shoulder, and we scrambled into the darkness beyond. By the time the wolf clawed its way up the shelves, we were deep into the guts of the house. We crawled through one turn after another until we found a second vent. Together we kicked it out, jumped down onto the dining room table, and got out of the house as fast as we could. I made sure to lock the door behind me.

The wolf was still inside, roaring and all crazy mad. The whole thing seemed unreal, but we couldn’t stop to think about it. We ran until we saw our bus in front of the auditorium, and we climbed on, breathless and soaked with sweat.

When I slumped into my seat, my heart was beating like a drum. My veins had turned to ice. My tongue didn’t work.

But I still had Dana’s book.