Watcher in the Woods (5 page)

He looked back at the crushed city. Against the shimmering blue backdrop
of the Mediterranean Sea, the clay walls of its buildings rose out of
the desert like a mirage.

From the city itself, smoke rose in columns like the blackened trees of a
long-dead forest. The vast Assyrian army had pushed against the walls and
poured into the streets. He was not part of that powerful force, though he
worked to accomplish the same goals of protecting the empire and conquering
new peoples and lands. If the army was a battering ram, he was a
dagger. The army crushed whole cities, while he sliced at the few men who
could rally those cities' legions or rebuild them from afar.

The prince he was after was just such a man.

The assassin had slipped into the city well ahead of the army. His task:
to kill the king and his two grown sons. He had found the father and one son
together, planning their response to the approaching invaders. Their deaths had
been easy. The second son had been with his commanders, who had fought the
assassin gallantly. In the end, the commanders had succumbed to the assassin's
superior skills. Their efforts, however, had allowed the prince to escape.

The assassin's arrows had found the prince as he bolted away. But his own
injuries had kept him from moving in for a quick kill.

He took a step and felt every one of those injuries. A heavy gash through a
muscle in his thigh threatened to topple him. A puncture in his side, just under
his ribs, made breathing difficult. He knew it needed attention, but he could
not spare the time—not as long as the last prince drew breath. His forearms
above the wide iron cuffs he wore for protection were bruised and cut, as was
the back of his right hand. He tightened his grip on his knife, thankful to have
not lost his hand's power and mobility.

Another step, and he
did
topple. His knees struck the dirt, as hard as tiles.
He slouched down, needing to rest. His head felt like it was baking in his tight,
cowhide cap. He pulled it off, letting his hair fall to his shoulders, over his eyes.
He used the tip of his knife to flick it back off his face. He hitched in a breath and
felt the wound in his side flare with white-hot pain. He tasted blood and spat it
out. The reddish-pink glob evaporated on the scalding desert floor. He let his head
roll back on his neck until he was staring up at the smoke-filled sky. There was
no breeze to cool his skin, no water to quench his thirst. He closed his eyes.

He imagined himself as a king. Instead of blood, his fingers would be
stained with wine. Instead of death, he would dream of life, the people of his
empire stretching to the horizon, honoring him for letting them live.

His eyes snapped open, and he shook such imaginings out of his head.

It was not his destiny to wear gold, but to wield weapons. He did not have
the power to grant life, only the duty to take it. To think otherwise would lead
to weakness and insanity.

Gritting his teeth, gripping his knife, he forced himself to rise. His eyes
found the prince, and his heart leapt with hope. The man appeared to be
down, sprawled against the unkind earth. The sight put strength in his legs.
He stumbled on, after his target.

When the assassin was fifty yards away, he saw the two arrows he
had let fly. They were jutting from the prince's back. Their feathered ends
swayed slightly, as though in a breeze. The assassin knew better: it was
the prince's breathing that moved the arrows. His muscles tightened with
determination to finish the job.

The prince stirred. His head lifted, and he pushed himself up onto his
elbows. He turned and saw the assassin. His eyes flashed in terror. He got
to his feet, every movement punctuated by a gasp of pain, a groan of effort.
He lurched on toward the mountains.

The assassin let out a heavy sigh. Didn't the prince know it was over?
Death was too near to hide from it any longer.

The man of death followed. He tried to pick up his pace, but his injuries
were taking their toll.

On with it
, he thought.
End it now
.

Ten minutes on, he figured he had closed the gap by only a few paces.
He forced his legs to move faster. He switched the knife into his left hand,
so his right could hold the wound in his thigh.

A scratch
, he told himself.
Is man defined by flesh and blood, or is he everything he has learned to be? I am an assassin because of my skills, my determination to perform well. My bones and sinew do not make me an assassin. My wounds cannot stop me from being one.

The sounds of the invasion behind him had faded. The smell of smoke had left
his nostrils. A slight breeze swept down from the mountains, carrying the musty
scents of eucalyptus and juniper. He was alarmed to realize how far they had
walked from the city. There was no chance of the prince escaping, but he wondered
if he himself would make it back before succumbing to his own injuries.

Great fissures came down from the foothills and carved jagged cracks into
the desert floor. As the two men approached the first of these gashes in the earth,
the assassin smiled. It was impossible to cross. The prince was as trapped by a
rent in the ground as he would have been by a wall.

The prince stopped at the edge of the ten-foot-wide crevasse. He seemed to
appraise it, then shifted his gaze back toward the assassin. With no other choice,
he stepped forward and fell out of the assassin's view.

The assassin shook his head. Of course the man would not make this easy.
He did not want to even think about having to climb back out of the fissure
once he delivered the prince to Charon, Hades's ferryman.

At the edge, he looked down. The crevasse was barely deeper than a man, but no
man lay at the bottom, as he had expected. He looked to the left and right, able to see
a good distance in either direction. No one. No footprints. No blood. No deeper holes
in which to hide. Directly below, something shimmered. He squinted at it. The light
and shadows were playing tricks on him. Was that a pool of water? The entrance to
a cavern? He couldn't tell, but something . . . something was there.

He stepped off the ledge to the first foothold. The dry ground crumbled
under him. He slid down, tried to hold something, found nothing. He dug in
his heels, skidded, and stopped.

He balanced on the edge of the pool, but it was no pool. The earth wavered
at his feet. A mist stirred, obscuring whatever it was that caused the sight. He
crouched and passed his hand over the fog. It cleared, and his knifed hand
shot up, ready to plunge down.

There was the prince! Down in the pit—but he did not appear to be
whole. To the assassin's eye, there was blood and body, not all together. An
arm here. A torso there. Was it a trick of the air, the way it shimmered and
moved? Or had an animal moved in on the prince?

A fast, silent animal
, the assassin thought.

The assassin plunged his knife down. Coldness gripped his arm. It
tugged at him. He tried to move back, but the earth under him gave way,
and his feet went into the hole. More coldness, pulling . . . pulling. With one
arm and both feet ensnarled by this trap, he knew he was going in.

He raised his face to the sky and yelled—not in fear, but in defiance
and effort: He would not die easily. Whatever pulled him would feel his
blade, his teeth, his determination.

Then, in a flash, he went in.

And vanished.

CHAPTER ten

SUNDAY, 3:33 P.M.

Sitting on the front porch steps, David bounced his soccer ball on a lower step between his legs. He had planned on practicing his dribbling and making some shots into a makeshift goal while waiting for Dad and Toria to return from the hardware store, but he didn't feel like it now. He squinted up at the sun through the trees. His eyes were achy, and he felt groggy and ready for bed, even though it was midafternoon.

“Not used to sleeping during the day,” he said.

“Sleep's sleep,” Xander said.

David lowered his eyes to find his brother, but saw only his own ghostly image reflected in the lens of Xander's camcorder. Xander paced in front of him, pulling in and out with the camera. Stooping almost to the ground to get weird—Xander would say
artistic
—angles.

“Quit stalling,” Xander said. “What happened in that World War II village you went to this morning?”

“I don't want to talk about it.”

“Just a little,” Xander coaxed. “We've gotta document what we're doing here.”

“Why?”

“Come on, Dae. How many people can say they rescued their mother from time-traveling thugs?”

“We haven't found her yet.”

“We will, and we'll have the story of it on tape. We'll be millionaires, I'm telling you.”

“Are you filming my sneaker?” David kicked at the camera, connecting with it harder than he had intended.

“Hey!” Xander yelled. He turned the camera to look at the lens. “You're going to break it, and you almost jabbed it through my eye.”

David just frowned at him. He had sat through Xander's walking completely around him, filming and saying things like, “This is the boy who fought off a Nazi tank” and “Ladies and gentlemen: the wound.” Here Xander zoomed in on the place where David's hair had been singed at the back of his neck and the collar of his shirt had caught fire. He hadn't been burned, and there was no wound.

Then Xander had started asking questions about his time in the French village, and David had realized that it wasn't such a fun memory. He hadn't found his mother as he thought he would, he was almost killed, and death and terror had been all around him. It wasn't just this last jaunt to World War II that bothered him.

“I know I was all gung ho about checking out these worlds. I mean, I insisted on going into that jungle where the tigers almost got me. And when I thought I saw Mom, I just went. But, I don't know . . .” He shook his head. “I'm starting to think there's nothing good about those worlds. It's just death . . . and danger.”

Xander said, “We gotta find Mom, Dae.”

“That makes it so much worse, that we
have
to go through.”

He examined his brother's face, looking for any sign that he was as worried and reluctant as David. But Xander's expression was unreadable. Since Mom's kidnapping, Xander's determination to find her made all of his emotions—anger at Dad, sadness for Mom—look the same.

David said, “After you came back from the Colosseum, you didn't ever want to see those doors again. Aren't you still afraid of what's on the other side?”

“Of course I am.”

“You don't act like it.”

“We gotta find Mom,” Xander repeated. “That's all that matters. That's all I think about.”

“But you're out here with your camera, talking about making a documentary. We're getting ready for school tomorrow. Mom can't be all you're thinking about.”

Xander sat on a lower step and twisted to look up at David. “I've been thinking about what Dad said, that our best chance to find her is if we have all the time we need to do it and none of us gets hurt. I want to find her today,
right now
, but what if it takes longer—a month or even a year? We can't have people curious about what we're doing, why we're not in school, why we've become recluses. We need to look like a normal family.”

“Even if we're not,” David added with a half smile.

“
Especially
because we're not,” Xander said. “People will leave us alone if they think there's nothing special about us. And Dad needs to make money. We need to live, eat. We might need to buy things to help in the search.”

David thought about that. “Like what?”

Xander shrugged. “Like rope,” he said, unsure. “Like the locks Dad's getting now. There's always something. I've seen movies where people lost wars because they couldn't afford to keep fighting. If we want to keep looking for as long as it takes, we need money, and that means Dad has to work.”

David pictured Dad going into his office at the school, listening to parents complain, disciplining students, hiring teachers . . . whatever else principals did. He imagined himself grinning at teachers, raising his hand to answer a question, making new friends. All with Mom gone—
kidnapped
. “I don't think I can do it,” he said. “Just pretend everything's okay?”

Xander set the camcorder on a step and gripped David's knee. “I don't want to either. I wanna be up there now, going through every door, but that would be like jumping in the ocean to rescue a friend when you can't swim. You both end up dead. Better to find a lifeguard or throw in a life preserver. That's how Dad wants to handle it: smart and safe.” He smiled. “So be the gloomy kid, if you have to. Just don't be the weirdo who never showers and always rambles about living in a haunted house.”

David said, “It
is
haunted . . . in a way.”

“Sort of,” Xander agreed. His eyes took in the front doors. “The past lives here, doesn't it? I mean,
really.
”

“I wish it didn't,” David said. “And I wish we didn't have to keep visiting it.”