Part 21 (1/2)

Megan a Pinka ”Cooper! Please!” Megan again.

Dress a My fingers curled around the knife again, one digit at a time.

Basketballa Crackers a The pulsing drumbeats zapped harder, faster. The creature's eyes bored into mine, green eyes so like my own. How could that be-how could they be the same?

”Cooper, fulfill your destiny. Be what you were made to be.” The creature's body-farm breath was hot against my ear. ”The chosen one.”

Pink a red a green a blue a crayons a Megan.

Never. Let. Go.

My last finger curled around the knife's hilt, and on the next electric pulse, I sucked in a breath and let it out with a scream and a thrust. ”Never!”

The blade came up and sank into the creature's chest. His eyes popped wide with surprise and he gasped. I ripped the blade to the right, then the left, then up and down, in the shape of a cross. Creating one holy mess in his chest.

He fell back, staggered three steps, then crumpled to the ground. He twitched several times, then went still.

The vines on the wall scrambled like spiders, crawling backwards, down the walls like retreating soldiers, running toward the creature. They covered him, becoming a pile that looked like someone's fall yard cleanup.

Then a silence. Nothing in my head. Nothing in the well.

I limped over to Megan. ”You all right?”

She nodded. ”You?”

”I've been better.” I bent down and cut the vines that bound her in place. These didn't grow back. They simply shriveled up and died.

The thing was dead.

It was over.

Or at least, that's what I thought.

I have a surprise for you,” Megan said.

”Megan, we've got to get out of here. I'm sure that thing is dead, but a” I glanced at the still, silent lump on the floor. Something nagged in my stomach, something that told me there was more to all of this, something I had missed.

”You want to see this. Believe me.” She tugged me farther down the tunnel, into a s.p.a.ce even narrower and lower than where we'd been before. The creature's words kept echoing in my head. ”Progeny”? ”Child of my loins”? Was it possible? I was related to that thing?

No way. No how. No blood. It was messing with my head, nothing more. We reached a door fas.h.i.+oned from an old wine cask.

I shook off the thoughts and followed Megan inside the cramped little room. I heard her surprise before I saw it. And I nearly cried. I looked at Megan, then again at what was before me. ”Is it a really him?”

She nodded. ”The monster was keeping him as”-she swallowed-”bait. In case something happened to me. I heard him telling that to someone else.”

I rushed forward and broke open the wooden bars that formed the cage holding my dog. Whipple bounded into my arms, thinner, dirtier, but as overjoyed to see me as I was to see him. He licked my head, my neck, my arms, anything he could reach, his tail wagging so fast that I thought it might pop off. I held him to my chest and stroked his head. ”My mother said he was dead.”

”I don't know, Cooper. He was here when a when that thing brought me down here.” She wrapped her arms around herself and s.h.i.+vered.

”Let's go,” I said, drawing her against me with one arm. ”We've been down here long enough. All of us.”

Megan nodded, then brushed away her tears. ”Thank you.

”For what?”

”For coming to get me.”

”I'm sorry it took so long.” I held her tightly and wasn't sure I could ever let her go again. ”Seems I'm always late picking you up.”

Megan laughed. And it was the best sound I'd ever heard.

It took us nearly an hour to get out of the well. My shoulders were shot, and Megan was weak from spending two days down there, with nothing more to eat than a granola bar she'd had in her pocket. She'd refused the creature's offer of the special grapes. Thank G.o.d.

When I finally climbed over the edge, I expected to find Faulkner's body exactly where I'd left it. He was gone. Who had taken him? My mother? Sam?

The creature might be dead, but danger possibly still lurked out there. I stood up and scanned the woods. The sun was just beginning to rise, casting everything in shades of pink. Even Megan. ”Don't move,” she said.

”We have to-”

She took her bandanna off my wrist and wrapped it tightly around the worst of my cuts. ”Take care of you before we do anything else,” she said, finis.h.i.+ng my sentence. She gave me a light kiss on the cheek and a tender brush against the sc.r.a.pes running along my arm, her face full of concern.

The vine army was gone. The woods were back to being normal woods. Maybe I'd imagined that feeling back in the well, that feeling that something was undone. The thing was dead, and Faulkner had come out of whatever coma he'd been in and had gone home. That was what I told myself, anyway.

”You sure you're all right?” Megan asked.

”Yeah, fine.” I was beat up, cut to h.e.l.l, and in need of a truckload of aspirin, but I had Megan back, she was safe, and that was enough. ”Totally fine.”

”Okay,” she said. And smiled.

Megan's mother came screaming out the door when we walked up the front walk of her house. Megan made up something about getting lost in the woods, hitting her head, falling down the well, and being knocked out, and I chimed in with a little fiction about finding her. Mrs. Garrett barely heard a word we said because she was bawling so hard and hugging Megan so tightly.

We both left out the part about the homicidal creature. Megan and I figured Mrs. Garrett didn't need that in her perfect little Betty Crocker world.

”Hey, I almost forgot.” Megan smiled. ”Happy birthday.”

”Oh, yeah.” I had really done it, hadn't I? The big day had arrived, and I had killed the creature before he had taken me.

A s.h.i.+ver chased up my spine. I shrugged it off. I didn't have anything to worry about anymore.

Megan gave me a kiss, then drew back, her eyes dancing, the rising sun casting sparkles over her face. ”See you later, Cooper.”

All I could do was nod. Because my brain was completely fried after that kiss.

I was tired. I was hungry. And all I wanted to do was go to bed, wake up, and find Faulkner at the kitchen table, throwing Cheerios at my head.

But Sam was still out there, and so was my mother. And I didn't know whether the creature's death would end everything- Or just ramp up the game.

The farther I got from Megan's house and the closer I got to Sam's McMansion, the more uneasy I felt. As if I were on the edge of something more.

I kept telling myself to relax. There was no laughter in the air, no crazy vines springing up around me. No voices in my head. Everything was back to plain old Maple Valley.