Adam of Albion Read online

  Just play along, Adam told himself. Let Barry think what he wants and thump his chest.

  “Thanks, Barry,” he said. “You’re right, I was so scared I could hardly move.”

  “So was it somebody really shooting?” Barry asked excitedly.

  Adam hesitated, but he couldn’t come up with a good lie that quickly.

  “Yeah, but he wasn’t aiming at anything—just up into the air. Maybe he was mad about the concert, or maybe just a crazy guy shooting at the moon. I hid and he took off—he must have seen you coming.”

  Barry nodded gruffly. “No problem. Just keep watching how I handle things, and maybe you’ll start learning not to lose your cool.” But even he looked a little embarrassed at his own blustering. Then he slapped his hand on the bike. “So how about it, genius? You got this thing working again?”

  “I’m about to try.” Adam straddled the seat, turned on the ignition, and kicked the starter. The engine just coughed.

  “Yeah, great,” Barry muttered.

  Adam gritted his teeth and kicked the starter again. This time the cough was more of a sputter and lasted a few seconds, with a little cloud of dirty smoke from the exhaust.

  “Way to go,” Barry sneered. “Guess we’d better start walking.”

  But Adam knew what the sputter and smoke meant—the fuel system was getting primed to go. He gave it one more shot, this time really cranking down. The sputter lingered, almost died—but then the engine caught and smoothed out into a steady purr.

  Barry grunted, a sound of annoyance that Adam had succeeded mixed with relief that they were saved.

  Adam stepped off the bike and gave the handlebars over to Barry. But then he suddenly had the overpowering urge to go look at Jason once more—to pay his final respects the way people did at a funeral.

  “Whoa, I dropped my wallet,” he said, slapping his pocket. “I’ll be right back.”

  “Well, hurry, dammit!”

  Adam trotted across the church and behind the rockpile where Jason’s body was hidden.

  It was gone.

  He stared at the spot, thinking he must be in the wrong place. But no—the pool of blood was still there.

  He lifted his gaze and scanned the area, in case Jason had crawled away. There was nothing like the shape of a human being that he could see.

  But—far out in the field, so faint he might have been imagining it, he thought he glimpsed a cluster of tiny flickers. Maybe they were some kind of glowing insects like fireflies—but moving close to the ground, in formation, at a fast, steady pace?

  “Come on, moron!” Barry yelled.

  Reluctantly, Adam ran back to the bike and hopped on.

  As they chugged back along the narrow country road they’d come in on, the world seemed very dark and silent, and Adam—with the cold weight of the “only thing that matters” bouncing between his shoulderblades—felt very far from home.

  FOUR

  They made it back to Blackthorn Manor just before 10 P.M. The grownups weren’t home yet, which was a huge stroke of luck. Adam wasn’t even worried any more about getting in trouble—that seemed tiny compared to everything else that had happened. But he didn’t want anyone to know that they’d been anywhere near the Watching Druids or the ruined church, and whatever cover story Barry made up would have been complicated, Adam was too lousy a liar to follow it well, and he was bound to trip up. Instead, they’d just say they’d spent the evening watching weird British sitcoms on TV, playing video games, listening to music—stuff the grownups couldn’t care less about—and they’d never left the house. Unless something else went wrong, it would probably work.

  They rushed to stash the moped in its shed, with Adam dampening a rag and quickly wiping off the dirt. The bike had a few new scrapes and dents, but it was dinged up anyway. Since Reg was usually half drunk, he probably wouldn’t notice. He probably would notice that his gas tank was down, but if he accused them they’d just deny it and get him thinking he remembered it wrong. At any rate, at least they wouldn’t be caught red-handed.

  Then they snuck into the huge old house, using a back entrance to avoid the servants. Adam had been here three days now and he was still getting lost inside. Right now, especially, it seemed like they had to run through half a mile of hallways.

  Their rooms were on the third floor, across the hall from each other. Adam darted into his own, shut the door, and flopped on the bed. As soon as he stopped moving, he felt as limp as cooked spaghetti, and also still kind of queasy. But his brain was buzzing with questions.

  It was obvious that the man and woman in the car were after whatever was in Jason’s backpack—and that they were both ruthless murderers. But who were they and what was behind all this?

  What had happened to Jason? He was too badly hurt to have gotten away from there on his own, Adam was sure of that. Could those little lights he’d seen have anything to do with it? Had he really even seen them, or was he just so stunned by then that he’d started hallucinating?

  But above all—what was the “only thing that matters?” His curiosity was driving him crazy, but he didn’t dare look just yet because Barry might come barging in any second. In fact, Adam figured he’d better hide it—Barry also felt totally free to rummage around through his stuff—so he slipped the backpack under the bed.

  He’d just settled back down again when he heard a car door slam outside. His first, split second thought was: the woman in the Jaguar! He sat up so fast he got a cramp in his mid-section, and skidded on his knees to a window.

  Then he exhaled a big sigh of relief. The car was a Rolls-Royce, bringing the grownups home: Barry’s mother and father, who were Adam’s Aunt Isabelle and Uncle Giles; and Barry’s aunt and uncle, Lord Geoffrey—Giles’s brother—and his wife, Lady Winnifred, the owners of Blackthorn Manor.

  Besides them and the chauffeur, busily helping the ladies out of the car and handling the luggage, there was one other person:

  A girl about his own age, who looked tiny except for her hair. It fell almost to her waist, a great wild cloud that was somewhere between blond and white.

  This, Adam realized, must be Geoffrey and Winnifred’s daughter, who’d been away visiting other relatives.

  Her name was Artemis, which Adam thought was geeky in a way he kind of liked. He knew his mythology pretty well—Artemis was the goddess of hunting and of the moon. In fact, that was the color this girl’s hair seemed to be—moonlight. It floated around her as she walked toward the house, and somehow gave the impression that she was floating, too.

  Adam stared at her, fascinated. He’d never seen anyone like her. Her skin was as pale as her hair, and she wore a ton of black eyeshadow and silvery lipstick. She was dressed entirely in black, with a T-shirt that came down to the fashionably torn knees of her jeans, which were tucked into heavy black boots—sort of like a Dearth-head, except that there was a definite sense of class.

  The only things he’d heard about her were that she was supposed to be very smart, and Barry didn’t like her. “She’s a freak,” he’d said sullenly. “You’ll see what I mean.” But he said it the same way he talked about other people he didn’t like because they knew how to put him in his place.

  Well, Adam would have a chance to make up his own mind, starting tomorrow morning. Meantime, he had plenty of other things to think about, and they came flooding back as he stretched out on the bed again—waiting for a chance to check out that backpack. It looked like Barry wasn’t going to come bother him after all—he was probably too wiped out. The grownups wouldn’t stay up much longer, and Adam was so wired he wouldn’t have any trouble staying awake until the house was quiet. He kept his clothes on and pulled the thick comforter over him.

  At least, he thought he wouldn’t have any trouble staying awake. But in the dimly lit room and warm bed, his muscles couldn’t help relaxing and sleep tugged at his eyelids like gentle fingertips.

  He forced them open again, straining them as wide as they’d go, but that set his
jangled nerves even more on edge. He decided to try a trick he’d learned when he was little, to calm himself down: checking the ranch’s fence line in his head. That had been his first job—well, his first real job, not counting feeding the chickens and Walter, the rooster whose main goal in life was to terrify the little boy (he still had a scar over his right eye where Walter had attacked him).

  At first he’d ridden the line with his father, sitting behind him on their old gray mare (which his Mom had actually named Mare) with Dad’s broad back sheltering him from the wind, and learning to take care of the taut wire fencing that looped around the ranch and sometimes seemed endless. It was very important to keep the cattle safe and secure, and the fencing constantly needed to be fixed, especially in spring after the blizzards and harsh winter winds had done their damage. By the time he was eight, he’d been doing most of the repair work himself.

  After his mom died, his father started riding the line by himself again. By now, Adam realized that his dad was grieving—that being out there alone, drifting through that lonely landscape on the slow-walking old horse, was his way of dealing with his heartbreak. Dad had never been much of a talker and when he did talk it was usually about the weather, or the health of the bull they’d bought last year, or some lame-brained thing Congress had cooked up.

  Neither of them ever talked about how much they missed the wife and mother they loved.

  But checking the fence line soothed them both in their own ways, kind of like praying or meditating, and it worked just fine for Adam tonight.

  In fact, it worked too well.

  FIVE

  When Adam opened his eyes, he spent a few confused seconds not knowing where he was. Then it all started to come back.

  The bedside clock read 11:44 P.M. The old house was quiet except for a few creaks and rustles, and the metronome ticking of the big grandfather clock at the end of the hall. Outside the windows, the night was just as still.

  So why did he think he’d been awakened by a faint moaning sound like wind?

  He must have dreamed it, he thought. But he lay very still, just in case it came again.

  And there—a few seconds later, it did.

  But it wasn’t really like wind. It was more like—a sob. Soft, quiet, but piercing right into him.

  And while it wasn’t hard to hear, it seemed to be somehow, well, small.

  He stayed absolutely still, barely breathing and listening hard. The sound rose every minute or so, quavering sadly for a few seconds, then dying off again.

  Weirdest of all—he could tell by now that it was coming from under his bed.

  He didn’t have any trouble remembering what was there.

  Slowly and quietly, Adam slid off the bed and knelt on the floor. His groping hand found one of the backpack’s straps, and he eased it to him until it was in a sliver of moonlight filtering in through the window.

  He let it sit there for a good minute, listening hard. But the sobbing sound had stopped cold.

  Adam swallowed hard, then inched open the pack’s zipper. Way down in a bottom corner, he could just see the lump that had banged against his back on the bike.

  It looked like a rock—pretty much the same as the rock Jason had used as a decoy. Cautiously, he slipped his hand inside and touched it. It felt like a rock, too, rough and solid.

  His fingers closed around it and he lifted it out.

  It was a rock. There was no doubt about it—just a plain old ordinary rock.

  He was hit by sudden panic that almost made him dizzy. He’d made a terrible mistake—he’d been so scared and frazzled in the old church, he’d goofed and somehow ended up with the decoy rock instead of the real thing.

  But no—he’d seen the woman throw the other one against the wall, heard her scream at the gunman for failing.

  And then she’d shot him.

  He took a couple of deep breaths, getting hold of himself—something he was starting to get used to. He had heard that sobbing sound, and it was coming from the pack, and there was nothing else in there.

  He stood up, taking the rock to the window for better light. As he examined it more closely, he noticed that maybe it wasn’t quite an ordinary rock, after all. The surface was cool, but his fingertips seemed to feel a subtle warmth coming from the core. It seemed heavier than it should be, not like steel or lead, but like it had its own gravity.

  Then, as he turned it slowly in his hands, he realized that it was shaped like a miniature human head.

  He even thought he could see a face. The nose, mouth, and ears were rough like the rest of the surface but in exactly the right places, and so were two small ovals that could have been eyes, although they were dark and blank.

  Adam touched his index fingertip to the nose, and very lightly, rubbed it. The rough rock surface started crumbling like sandstone, revealing what looked and felt like smooth skin. Then he remembered what the gunman had said when he’d pulled the rock out of Adam’s pack: So you’re in disguise, my little friend—we’ll get you cleaned up soon enough.

  Adam tugged loose a corner of bedsheet and used it to rub off more of the grit, gently and carefully cleaning it away.

  With every swipe it became clearer—a man’s head, intricately fashioned, perfectly proportioned, and disguised as a rock!

  Suddenly, he understood why Jason had stopped at the heads on the graveyard crosses. He was trying to hide this one where it would look just like all the others.

  Adam stared at it in wonder. The face looked ancient and young at the same time—handsome, even noble, with shell-shaped ears, a bit of slant to the eyes, a long straight nose, and a slightly cleft chin. The skin was dark, a weird shade that wasn’t human or really even a color, but more like it was blending in with the gloomy room around it. There was about an inch of neck, solid and smooth on the bottom. The skull was capped by curls like you saw on Greek and Roman statues, which softened to the feel of human hair as Adam brushed the grit out.

  But except for the very faint warmth he could feel, it seemed lifeless.

  Heed the head. Was that really what Jason had said? If it was, did that mean it could talk?

  Or—he thought with sudden sick suspicion—was this all a colossal joke being played on him? Jason hadn’t been shot at all, the whole thing was just a show, and the head was some kind of toy like a doll that could cry.

  But who would go to that kind of trouble? Especially over Adam?

  Well, whatever it was, he figured he might as well try talking to it. If he made a fool of himself, at least there was no one else here to see.

  Kneeling on the floor, he cradled it in both his palms and held it in front of his face.

  “Can you hear me?” he whispered.

  Not a twitch.

  “Do you have a name?” Adam tried.

  No luck with that, either.

  He kept staring at it, racking his brain for what to do. Then something obvious occurred to him. The sound he’d heard was sobbing, right?

  “You’re sad, aren’t you?” he whispered. “I know what that’s like.”

  It almost seemed like he felt the head make a tiny quiver! He held his breath—but nothing else happened. He’d probably just imagined it.

  “Come on, maybe I can help,” Adam went on softly. “Why were you crying?”

  Quick as a lightning flash, the eyes filled with a golden blaze and stared back at him! The look was fierce, intense—and mad.

  “Crying?!” the head demanded furiously, with the nose emitting a moist snort of outrage that misted Adam’s chin. “Crying? Why, you scurrilous young rodent, you sniveling child—you dare to accuse me of crying?”

  “YAAAAAAHHHHHH!” Adam yelled—so shocked and scared that before he could stop himself, his hands tossed the head up in the air like it was red hot.

  He scuttled frantically backwards on his butt, gasping like a big-mouth bass, while the head thumped on the floor and bounced away under the bed.

  Dizzily, Adam decided that he was still drea
ming. That explained it—this was one of those dreams within a dream where you kept thinking you woke up and everything was normal again, except then it turned out to be stranger than ever.

  Which was exactly what happened. The head was still as mad as a swatted hornet, and it kept right on fuming at him from under the bed.

  “Oh, so then you just toss me aside, with absolutely no concern for my feelings, let alone my brain-pan,” it roared. “Young varlet! Cretin! Ye gods and demons, what have you done to me, thrusting me into the palsied hands of an idiot boy?”

  Adam tried the old trick of pinching himself, hard. He felt it, all right. The dream theory was wavering.

  The voice, somewhat muffled now by the thick hanging comforter, was small like the sobs had been—but at the same time rich and deep, like an actor booming out lines in a Shakespeare play. Between that and Adam’s own yell a few seconds ago, there was plenty enough noise to wake somebody up. Dream or not, he figured he’d better play it safe and clamp the lid on.

  “Shhhh,” he hissed, dropping flat on his belly and lifting the comforter. “We’ve got to be quiet.”

  The head shut up, although whether because it was going along with him or now it was giving him the silent treatment, was anybody’s guess.

  Adam lay still for several seconds, listening hard in case someone was coming. But the old house slept on under its blanket of calm.

  He looked under the bed again. It was really dark in there. He could barely make out a few shapes that might have been the head, or some really buff dust bunnies—he couldn’t tell.

  “Look, I don’t know what’s going on,” he whispered. “I—”

  Ouch!—there was a sudden stab of pain in his right earlobe! It stung like a horsefly bite and he instinctively started to swat at it. But he caught himself. Horseflies didn’t feel as heavy as a bowling ball hanging from your ear, and they didn’t growl at you like an insane hummingbird.

  The head had snuck up on him and attacked!

  Adam managed to keep his cool. “I didn’t mean to hurt you, I swear—I was just scared. I want to help, I really do.”