 
### Urban Legends Part 1

#### By Eve Hathaway

#### Published by Publications Circulations LLC.

SmashWords Edition

All contents copyright (C) 2013 by Publications Circulations LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this document or the related files may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, by any means (electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, companies and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.

**~ ~ ~ ~**

### The Child of Mystery

Chains of Darkness Part 1

### Chapter One

Tick Tock.

The grandfather clock downstairs ticks off the seconds that have passed since Aunt Frances and Uncle Josiah went to bed. She listens for their creaking bed-one body, then the second. In fifteen minutes, Uncle Josiah will begin to snore, but even after three years of living with her aunt and uncle, she still has no idea if her aunt ever sleeps.

Tick tock.

She suspects not-although she knows that her aunt cannot read her thoughts, she also knows that her aunt suspects something. It is the night before her fifteenth birthday-and her wedding. Melinda has been planning her escape for three months, now; ever since her aunt and uncle arranged for her to become Old Man Herman's third wife. She tries not to think about the consequences if she were to get caught. The last girl to protest a marriage had been forcibly raped by her betrothed in front of the elders. Rumor has it that she lives, still bound in chains in the basement of the man she never married, every year giving birth to a child whom she will never see. And she had merely protested-what Melinda is doing probably warrants death, if she were caught.

So, she had better damn well not get caught.

Tick tock.

She reaches over her head to twitch the curtain aside so that the light of the moon can shine on the alarm clock on the dresser. Ten o'clock: two more hours to wait. Melinda feels the exhaustion from the day's labor creep up on her, but she'd poured some of her uncle's morning coffee into a thermos earlier that morning and drank it before she went to bed, and now, it's all she can do to keep her body under the covers. Luckily, her cousin Lucy is nine years old and a sound sleeper, so she won't be awake when Melinda slowly eases out of the warm bed and tiptoes out the door.

Until then, though... tick tock.

Three years ago, her mother got run off the road on the way to Melinda's recital. In any other state, it would have meant a hospital stay; maybe a few stitches and a cast, but in Boulder, Colorado, it was a death sentence. It wasn't until she saw her Aunt Frances at the funeral that she understood why her mother never mentioned her past. Three years, living with these crazy Christian Knights, kneeling to pray and biting her tongue and singing the praises of the simple life-all the while scouting for a way out, watching and timing the patrols that circled the compound, learning which floorboards squeaked and how to move silently through the creaky clapboard house. It all came down to this night. And the boy who was not a boy, but an angel.

The elders say that he is possessed by the devil, but Melinda can see the truth behind his form. It's a gift of hers that she's kept secret in this dangerous place-being able to see angels and demons as they stalk the earth. During her first year in the compound after her mother died, she wondered if somehow the gift had died, along with her freedom, because she could not see any of their glowing auras in the people they inhabited. She still does not know what to make of the fact that the cult is so isolated that neither heaven nor hell will bother with it. But then Caleb wandered into the compound, and though she knew him for what he was, nobody else did. When they discovered he didn't know how to speak and had nothing between his legs, the elders decided he was possessed and needed to be exorcised. Since then, he has been kept in the equipment barn, crammed into a large dog crate. Nobody quite knows what the elders have been doing to him for two years, but the screams that emanate from the barn frighten even grown men into grumbling about letting the boy go.

Still, nobody dared enter the barn to do it.

The hands of the alarm clock converge on midnight. Everybody is resolutely asleep. Melinda reaches under her pillow, pulls out her old sneakers, and slips out of the room like a shadow. Tick tock. She's wearing the clothes that she brought with her when they first moved her to the compound-sweatpants, socks, Polartec fleece sweater (they allowed her to keep these because they were "more useful than vain"). She's carrying her sneakers-she hasn't tried them on this floor-there's no telling if they'll squeak.

Her heart is going like a trip hammer and a cold sweat breaks over her as she goes, ever so slowly, down the stairs, each step a careful consideration of her weight on the wood. The door to her aunt and uncle's bedroom is closed, but that doesn't mean Aunt Frances is lying in bed, sleeping. For all Melinda knows, her aunt could be wide awake, just waiting to throw open the door and catch her deceitful niece obviously trying to escape, and throw her upon the justice of the elders. She wants to be out the door NOW.

When she's halfway down the stairs, the banister gives a squeak. The sound might as well be a shriek piercing the silence. Melinda stifles a gasp and holds her breath. Above her, there is a muffled shifting of springs, but after a minute, neither her aunt nor her uncle opens the bedroom door. She lets the air out of her lungs, fights to keep her legs from collapsing. Somehow, she manages to make it down the rest of the stairs without a sound.

Then she creeps through the living room and into the kitchen. It would have been faster to go through the front door, but the great lock on the front door cannot be opened quietly, and the hinges squeak. Though the kitchen door is quieter; the tumbling of the bolts as the knob turns seems impossibly loud, and she wonders how her aunt could possibly not hear the grating noise of metal-on-metal, or the gunshot clarity of the click as the door opens. But still, the house is silent, and as the cool night air rushes past her, she breathes a sigh of relief. There is a peculiar finality to the act of closing the door behind her-ahead of her, the night. Behind her, the nightmare. And on the horizon, a new dawn.

### Chapter Two

She doesn't think there are patrols within the compound, but she keeps her head up as she laces her sneakers anyway. Uncle Josiah had been grumbling about one of the elders making such a proposal, but nothing seemed to come of it. Nevertheless, she keeps to the shadows, hoping the navy blue of her clothing is close enough to black. The moon is full tonight, but the clouds are patchy so, what light there is, shifts, rendering even the shadows unsafe. In the dark, she is even more aware of how sharp the blades of grass are against her fingers and how loud the crickets really are. Shut up, she wants to scream. She can't hear her own footsteps-how is she going to hear someone coming up behind her?

It takes her longer to reach the barn than she thought it would. She doesn't have a watch, but the skies have shifted noticeably from when it was first dark and the moon is high and white in the sky, and this frightens her. What if she can't get him out in time? What if he can't run?

She pushes those thoughts out of her mind. He's an angel, she reminds herself. Even if they've broken him, he can heal. How she knows that-she won't think about that, now. Now, she has to pick a lock.

She reaches into her pocket and takes out the bobby pin. It's a simple operation, really-push and slide, until the tumblers fall apart. But it takes skill, and patience, and a delicate touch, and warm hands, and daylight, and luck. She is painfully aware of how clearly she can be seen against the barn door, should anybody happen to glance her way. The cult members go to bed early, adhering to the old maxim of early-to-bed-early-to-rise, but even though the windows remain dark, it feels as if the houses are watching her, accusing her, sending a silent alarm to the elders. She finds herself glancing up at them from time to time, the words, "Please, be quiet" on her lips.

Finally the lock gives, and she slips into the barn. It's pitch black-the sliver of moonlight that she let in disappears as she closes the door-but after a moment, the glow of his aura spills from behind the tractors. It's faint, but it's enough to keep her from running into the tractors and combines that he's housed with. She's alarmed at how silvery it is-most angels have a golden aura-but when she sees him, he is surprisingly whole-and naked. She had not prepared for that. She hopes Gabe is. A few scratches mar his ghostly pale skin. He blinks at her, his eyes black with pain.

"I've come to get you out," she whispers.

He says nothing. She takes a slender metal file she'd filched from the foundry and lodges it into the padlock. She takes a deep breath, and slams the file and padlock into the ground, so that the file crunches into the lock. A bit of shimmying, and the lock springs open.

"Come with me," she whispers, wishing that the clanging as she unwinds the chain from the bars of the kennel would stop. The air in the barn is still, silent-there's no echo. Still, it would be dangerous to assume they are safe. "Stay close, and stay quiet."

She leads him to the back of the barn, where there's a smaller emergency door. She wishes she knew what time it was. They'll have to go out and pray that the patrols have passed, or are still far enough away that they can make it to the first cornfield without being seen. Fifteen minutes between patrols seems like a long time, but given how much open space there is between the barn and the corn field, their window of opportunity is actually quite small. She cracks open the emergency door-it's chained shut, but the chain is so loose that they can both slip through the gap in the door. There is no one in sight. Together they run, darting for the corn.

The crash of their bodies against the stalks will have alerted any nearby patrol, if there were one. She doesn't take chances, doesn't stop to listen and see. She grabs Caleb's hand and leads him down the narrow row and to the footpath through the field-a narrow gap between the rows where people can walk, the easier for the farmers to get home in the middle of the day and have lunch. They're running when, overhead, a flare bursts. They've been seen.

Shit.

### Chapter Three

She'd hoped to at least get to the edge of the corn before they were seen. Still, they are moving quickly, without disturbing too much of the corn-but it will be obvious which path they are on. She turns into a bare row-where they've laid down the water lines this year-and follows that. They're a little noisier-there's less room-but the tassels overhead are still, and that's what matters.

In the distance, she hears men shouting. Keep running, keep running. Her legs burn, but she wills herself on. A stitch knots in her side, stabbing pains shoot through her with every step. Nobody ever died from pain.

Caleb manages to keep up with her as they turn onto another footpath. She doesn't know the corn fields that well-it makes her nervous, not to follow the original path. Gabe will be expecting her to come out at one spot-if he's there. It's the only part of her plan that she could not prepare for. It's the only part of her plan that must not go wrong.

It is too late to turn back. They run. The darkness carries the menacing roar of diesel engines being revved.

Oh, fuck.

And suddenly there is no more corn, just grass. They've made it out of the fields, but she can tell by the sound of the engines that they're going around the corn. They've got only a few minutes, at the most, before the men catch up to them.

She takes Uncle Josiah's Zippo lighter out of her pocket, lights it, and waves. It's answered by a flicker of headlights a good 300 yards away, and her legs nearly melt with relief. Behind her, there's shouting-the men in the cars have seen her signal. She must stay still, though-Gabe can't see her in the dark. If he runs her over then everything will be useless-

And there he is, not a hundred feet away. A burst of adrenaline hits her and she jerks Caleb, and together they run towards it. "Open the door!" she screams. "Open the door!"

Gabe gets out. He's gotten taller since she saw him last, and ganglier, and there's a stoop to his posture that suggests crushing burdens. But he's here, that's all that matters, now. He flings open the back door of his Jeep. It's a new car to her-when she was still living in the outside world, he was driving a Ford Escort, but that's a minor detail-"Go, go, go!" she yells. "They're coming!"

The first of the headlights pops out from behind the far edge of the corn field. "Shit!" Gabe says. "Hang on!" he shouts. He guns the engine and they rocket backwards. She and Caleb fall to the floor in a pile of limbs, and her arm slams against the divider between the front seats. The jeep bounces up and down, throwing the two of them into the air-even in this desperate state, Gabe had the sense to lock on his seat belt. Gabe throws the car into gear and they shoot forward, heading towards the interstate. "I hope they're empty," Gabe mutters.

The jeep has higher ground clearance, but it's slower in four-wheel-drive. The cars the men are driving send beacons of light bouncing wildly through the Jeep, but those beacons are getting brighter. As they rumble forward, she pulls herself up and looks out the rear windshield-and is nearly blinded by the headlights.

"Yeah, wouldn't do that," Gabe says, the nervous edge in his voice the only indication that he knows that they're there.

"Can't you go faster?" she pleads.

"Not if I don't want to roll over."

"They're catching up to us!" she shrieks.

"They'll definitely catch us if we roll."

The blast of a shotgun catches Melinda's throat as she begins to reply. There is no tearing of metal or shattering of glass, though. It might have been a warning shot, it might not have been-the cars are bouncing too much to be certain. For the first time that night, Melinda senses the hopelessness of their situation, a falling sensation that crushes the breath from her. She watches in horror as the cars spread out behind them in a line.

And then Caleb's aura becomes a blinding light to her, but Gabe is as insensitive to this glow as he is to the headlights in his rearview mirror-and the coal-black eyes begin to glow red, and then white. And as she watches, he spreads his ethereal wings and says something unintelligible, yet the anger in his words is unmistakable. Lightning flashes from his eyes, and a red glow comes out of his mouth. He is all aura, now-a beautiful, terrible creature, whose sole purpose is death. Melinda covers her ears and closes her eyes, terrified.

A wall of orange light and heat hits and surrounds the Jeep. She looks back-the line of cars has become a wall of flame, a solid wall of orange light occasionally broken by a grill. Caleb slumps to the floor of the Jeep, unconscious, drained. Gabe, in his usual, tight-lipped manner, says only, "Well, that was something."

She breathes a sigh of relief. Gabe drives on. They reach the Interstate, and head south.

### Chapter Four

"It's not exactly a matching set or anything, but it's wearable," Gabe says, as he enters their motel room.

They'd driven through the night, stopping only for gas, passing Wichita and turning west. Gabe finally pulled into a roadside motel at daybreak. He paid for two nights and a room with two twin beds, and slept most of the day, while Melinda watched TV and Caleb drifted into and out of consciousness. In the daylight, Caleb's hair is a pale, white-blond. His eyes, when he opens them, are a clear, milky gray, and the birdlike bones of his body jut alarmingly from his skin. Melinda tried to convince him to eat something out of the mini bar, but he wouldn't touch it. She has spent the day looking between the unconscious forms of Caleb and Gabe and Law and Order reruns. The news channel mentioned nothing about an inferno last night, which probably means that they are safe, for now. An hour ago, Gabe finally woke up, stretched, and said, "I'm going to get us some food. Anything you want?"

"A Coke," she said. It'd been years since she'd tasted one. The cult is a strange one-it forbids Coke and candy but not Twinkies, cell phones but not cars. Members are only allowed to go to "the city", as they call the little college town of Lincoln, on business approved by the elders. In that sense, it was lucky that she was getting married, because a wedding dress was approved business. Her uncle had taken her, but he wasn't allowed at the fitting. "Please mail this for me," she whispered to the attendant. The attendant looked at her, alarmed, but pocketed the letter. In the three months that followed, she prayed that she'd been explicit enough in her diagram of the compound, the signals that she planned to use, that the letter had not been intercepted. The only thing she knew for sure was that Gabe would be there if he got it.

And he was. She wonders, for the first time since her escape, if it means something that he's driven three-hundred miles across across purgatory to rescue her.

Gabe tosses two bags on the floor. "Thrift store in town," he says, by way of explanation. Melinda opens one-boys' clothing. She hands it to Caleb, who picks out a pair of worn jeans and a red NASCAR t-shirt. The other bag also has boys' clothing, but anything is better than the scratchy woolen dresses that she's worn for three years on the compound. She picks a pair of cutoffs and a tank top, and finds a denim jacket. For shoes, there's a pair of Keds, a turquoise plaid, a half size too big, but they'll do. She puts those on, too, trying not think about whose feet had been in them.-beggars not being choosers, and all that.

In the meantime, Gabe has set out a row of Styrofoam containers on the dresser, and a twenty-ounce bottle of Coke. She grabs it and chugs it, feeling the sugar and caffeine hit her system like a freight train. She was never very fond of Coca Cola, not until she was in a place where it was forbidden. It'd become an obsession of hers, to taste the "synthetic poison", as her aunt and uncle called it. Now, she feels as if the world has taken on an extra bit of clarity, and she feels her heart kick-start into another gear, slightly faster than normal. It's wonderful.

The intoxicating aroma of fried chicken-real, crispy, spiced, fried chicken, something else she hasn't tasted in three years-cool and creamy cole slaw, buttery biscuits and gravy-make her mouth water. Gabe opens one container, finds a drumstick, takes a bite. Melinda piles the food onto her foam plate, ravenous. Caleb merely watches them. It unsettles her, that he doesn't eat, but she decides not to press the matter. He's probably just not comfortable with eating human food, she thinks, and hopes that he'll get hungry enough to be curious if they just leave him be.

"So what's the plan now?" Gabe asks, tossing the bone aside and taking up a wing this time. The meat is tender, slipping off the bone like butter on a hot pan.

Melinda opens her mouth to say something, only she realizes that she has no plan. Escape from the compound has been the only thing that has mattered to her for three years. She puts a piece of gravy-drenched biscuit into her mouth, and chews, thinking about it. "I could live with you," she says, pitching it like a question.

Gabe shakes his head. "You can't-you know that. It's not decent. And I don't love you like that, kid."

"I'm fifteen," she says. "They were going to marry me. Fuck decency. And yes, you do."

Outwardly, the world hasn't changed that much in three years. Gabe still has the surfer-boy cut he sported when she first introduced herself to him and his mother. "I'm Melinda Perrera," she'd said, thrusting a tin of cookies that she'd baked at them. "We're going to be neighbors." He was nice to her, the way a big brother might be. When he took her to the movies, he held her hand through the scary parts, but she kept on holding it after they were over. He never did more than that, though. "My little kid sister," he sometimes said, laughing as he mussed her hair. He thinks I'm still that little girl, she realizes.

Inwardly, though, a great deal has changed-in her, and perhaps in him, too. No, not yet. "No, I don't," he says, now, but he swallows, and she can sense the terror in his voice-it had literally never occurred to him that she would grow up, that he could love her like that. "You-" he falters. You're more of a sister to me. The words hang in the air, unspoken because he suddenly realizes that they're no longer true. Her certainty frightens him, as does the jumbled mess of his feelings about her.

"You need to do something about your hair," he says. The dodge works. Melinda is mildly annoyed that he's changed the subject, but he's right-her hair is still coiled up in the elaborate system of braids that the women of the compound wear. It would identify her in a heartbeat. He reaches into the bottom of one of the paper bags and pulls out a cheap pair of hair shears.

"Well, come on," he says, going into the bathroom, where the greenish lighting makes everybody look faintly dead.

The women of the compound cry when their hair is cut-it's how the elders choose to punish relatively minor sins, like not keeping an immaculate house-but for her, it's a relief to see the chestnut-brown locks fall away. In the terrible lighting, Gabe does a horrible job-in the end, she has to trim her brand-new bangs herself-but the pageboy look will keep people from staring. Her features are very regular, utterly unremarkable-olive skin, large hazel eyes. Just another pretty, poor girl, with a DIY-haircut and thrift-store clothes.

"What's with the angel, anyway?" Gabe asks, watching her as she smoothes the jagged fringe of her hair.

"You can see them, too?" That's the other reason she likes him so much. When she told him that she could see them, he didn't automatically say that she was crazy, like so many other people did. He merely nodded, and listened. He didn't believe her, not then. But he does now.

"No, but I kinda assumed, after what happened last night," he says, leaving the sentence unfinished. He leaves the bathroom . She keeps snipping, concentrating on keeping her hand steady.

"Um, Melinda?"

"Yeah?"

"Where is he?"

She feels a lump form in her throat, and fights back a wave of nausea as she goes to confirm what she's inexplicably terrified about: the bed where Caleb was curled up on is empty. The silvery aura, the wall of flames-she doesn't exactly believe in being able to see the future, but right now, she has a very bad feeling that something terrible is going to happen.

"We have to find him," she says, after a long silence.

"Why?"

She looks at him, her heart starting to race. She's about to say, "We just do, I know it," when, in the distance, an explosion lights up the horizon. She points at the fireball. "That's why."

XXXXXXXXXXXXXX_ITUNES_TRIAL_CLIFFHANGER_XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

### Chapter Five

Hunter Green always hated his name. It was so stupid, being named after a color, though he supposed it was slightly better than "Red" or that baby that had been in the news recently-"Blue Peony" or something like that. Still, he'd put up with it for forty-three years, until one day his wife had laughingly referred to him as "faded" and he went out and changed his name, bought a 1984 Cadillac Eldorado with a hard top, cashed out his retirement savings, and just kept driving. He was now, according to his driver's license, Grendel Weiss, a name which suited the monstrosity of suburban life he'd escaped, and the meandering way with which he was now making his way across the country, beholden only to gravity and the fuel gauge.

"You have such a wonderful life," his co-workers would sigh, when his wife and children would show up at TruLife's corporate functions. And it was true, there wasn't really anything to complain about: his wife managed the household well, his kids were well-behaved even as teenagers, their house was paid off, their cars worked, and they still had sex. But it wasn't his life he was living. At work, he was constrained by the intransigence of both upper management and labor regulations; at home, his wife would nag at him to pick up his shoes and walk the dog and mow the God-damned lawn, for Chrissakes. He'd kept, in his desk drawer at work, legal pads filled with sketches of worlds he'd imagined; creatures both real and fake. In the garage, during his precious minutes when he didn't have anything to do, he worked these images into clay sculptures, the beauty and the terror in the final product surprising him. "Artist wages don't support a family," his wife would say when she saw him scraping at the clay. Now that he was on the open road, he wondered what took him so long to leave.

He's eating asphalt on Route 40 through Oklahoma, with the top down and Bon Jovi blasting on the tape deck, and thinking about what to do when he gets to California. His chin is scratchy-it's been nearly two weeks since he drove out of the dealer's lot, and in that time he hasn't shaved at all. He glances at his reflection in the rearview mirror-he looks like a dirty old man, the kind of guy that leers at young women on the subway. That won't bode well for job prospects out there. And he'll need a suit or something. Maybe find a small art house studio where they could use someone to do design. He'd have to bluster his way in, but he'd worked selling insurance for twenty years-bluster was what he did. But what he would never again do is work in an office. Ugly fluorescent lighting, good-bye.

He's feeling the mild buzz of the three beers he had at the pizza joint a few miles back when he sees him, or her-a boy, he thinks, but the hair is too long and kids these days were now gay and trans and all kinds of nonsense. Whatever happened to the good old days, when you sat down and shut up and did what you were told? Spoiled, the lot of them.

Still, the kid is alone, and even though he's feeling mildly cantankerous, there's enough of his father-instinct left in him to feel sorry for the kid. Never know what sort of shit he'll run into out here, especially now that it's getting dark, he thinks, as he pulls over. "Want a ride?"

The kid-it's a boy, he's sure of it now-merely looks at him, and blinks slowly. "I'm heading west," he says quickly, getting a little nervous. "Don't worry; I'm not a pervert or anything." As he says that, he realizes what he must look like: slightly drunk, unshaven, in a convertible where the floor is littered with fast-food wrappers and receipts, trying to pick up a kid walking down the highway. If that doesn't scream "pervert", I don't know what does. "Really," he adds, as if that would help.

The kid considers it for a moment, cocking his head. Then he moves to get into the car. The kid's movements seem a bit off, as if he has to consider every motion before he can execute it. Then again, what did Hunter-Grendel-the name took some getting used to-Grendel know about kids? True, he was a dad, but really it was his wife doing the kid-raising. He was just the allowance-dispenser. As he pulls back onto the highway, he smiles at the kid, his beer-addled brain trying to come up with passable small talk. "So... where ya from?"

The kid shrugs. He's pale; his hair so blond it's almost white. He's dressed in a pair of jeans and a red t-shirt, but no shoes. Grendel wonders how long he's been walking. The pizza joint was a good 20 minutes ago by his speeding car, and the next town isn't due for another thirty miles.

"You got a name? I'm Grendel." It pleased him to hear how natural it sounded, coming out of his mouth. Grendel. He could see himself shaking hands as he spoke it.

"They called me Caleb."

"Caleb's a cool name," Grendel says, relief washing over him. The ice has been broken, the hard part done. "Old-fashioned, but modern."

"My name is not Caleb."

What the hell am I supposed to do with that? Grendel wonders. He glances next to him. The boy seems faded, somehow-translucent, almost. I must be more drunk than I thought, Grendel thinks, and slows the car down to the speed limit so that he doesn't get pulled over.

Or, at least, he tries to.

He wants to lift his foot off the gas, but instead it pushes the pedal to the floor. The engine roars, and he watches in horror as the speedometer ratchets above 100, then 120, and then hits 140, but still they are careening faster and faster. Hunter Green is acutely aware of both the impossibility of this and the reality, but he's helpless to do anything about it. The car crests a low hill, soaring into the air. Hunter gasps in amazement as they glide over the wheat growing on either side of the highway, and for a moment he's enraptured by the sensation of true freedom and flight. But only for a moment, because the car bursts into a fireball. He's not aware of being vaporized.

### Chapter Six

Melinda doesn't have much hope of finding anything as they get closer to where they saw the fireball. It's only a few miles, but how could Caleb have gotten so far-he's an angel, of course he can go as far as he wants-in such a short time, and what is he doing?

"I thought angels were supposed to be good," Gabe says, as he drives towards the smoke.

"Apparently not all of them are," she says, shortly. "I don't know-he was in such pain-"

Singed wheat stalks indicate that they are getting close. The asphalt smolders-Gabe puts the Jeep into four-wheel-drive again and turns off the highway, onto the soft shoulder. They begin to crunch over things. Melinda leans out the side-there's just enough light left to see that Gabe has driven over a Cadillac emblem. Apparently this is all that's left of the car.

"I think we're here," Gabe says, cutting the engine. They've stopped at the edge of a scrim of whitish dust in the shape of a vague circle. Melinda steps out of the Jeep. There's nothing except melted asphalt, burned wheat, and scorched earth. She feels a sense of disappointment creep up on her. What were you hoping to find?

"Maybe he went up in flames, too?" Gabe suggests, as he joins her.

"No," she says, closing her eyes. She feels the earth under her feet, and fills her lungs with the bitter scent of burning asphalt and dirt. What are you doing, Caleb, she thinks. There's no response. Not that she expected one.

She shuffles through the dirt, aimless, and afraid. How could she have been so wrong about him? She tries to remember her first impressions of him when the farmer who found him brought him before the elders-yes, he was definitely an angel. He had the aura-which was oddly pale, even then, but she hadn't thought anything of it-and the ethereal wings of smoke that she had seen on the others.

Melinda can sense Gabe watching her, and she turns to look at him. He's got a worried look on his face as he leans against the Jeep. If you don't love me like that, you certainly worry like you do, she thinks. "I can't-I don't know why I expected to be able to get anything from this," she says, sweeping her arm at the ring of devastation around them. "I don't know why we should even bother-" The frustration, exhaustion, and terror of the last twenty-four hours finally catches up with her and she crumples to the ground, balling her fists and pressing them against her eyes.

-A wide expanse. A string of lights on the starlit horizon. A road.

She jerks to a sitting position, frantically looking around her to see what's changed. Her legs, in the cutoffs-the dirt-she plunges her hands into the dirt, and the vision that she saw comes back to her, details flooding her mind. The cool, dry air. The mountains in the background. The worn paint on the road, the trees popping up in the background. It's not just a string of lights, it's a city. A sign on the right. A name.

"Gabe," she shouts, as she stands up. Gabe flinches-he is a lot closer to her than she thought. She grimaces an apology. "I know where he's going. He gets stronger with every person that he kills. We need to hurry." She begins running back to the Jeep. Then she realizes that Gabe isn't keeping up.

"What is it, now?" she asks.

"Well," he says, coughing into his elbow. "You saw what he did to those cult members." She nods. "And you see this smoking crater. Forgive me for being a little cynical about how enthusiastic he's going to be to see us."

"He won't hurt us," she says, but even as she says it, she wonders about it. Would Caleb know her as the one who saved him? Would he accept that he owes her a favor? Doubt tickles her mind. Up until now, she's been feeling her way through this whole matter, but now Gabe has injected a modicum of sense and rationality into the mix. And the sensible thing to do would be to call the authorities, let them deal with Caleb. It would be nice, she thinks, to let him be someone else's problem. And then she realizes how tired she still is, because it's a full five seconds before she realizes what a stupid idea it is.

"He might not be glad to see us," she says. "But what are we going to do? Call in the National Guard?"

"I dunno, can't we like, find a demon to take him down or something?"

She almost punches him for that. But then she reminds herself that Gabe can't see them. He has no idea what they look like, the things they can do. To him, the forces they are dealing with are probably no scarier than the imaginary monsters kids have under their beds. She's seen one, she wants to tell him-on her last Halloween, she'd gone trick-or-treating with her friends, and was on her way home. It was late, and then all of the streetlights started flickering. She froze, stupid girl that she was. It was pure luck that the creature she saw-a snake-like thing, black as an oil slick, with the head of a dinosaur with sixteen glowing red eyes and a gaping hole for a mouth-was not a particularly intelligent demon, nor a hungry one. A body with a fading golden aura struggled feebly from its mouth. She's never mentioned it to anyone.

"Demons-they're not like-you can't just talk to them," she sputters.

Gabe shrugs. "If you say so," he says.

"Besides, I've got no idea how to catch one, or how to make it do what I want. And they look nothing like those cartoon devils you see, with two stupid little horns and a trident."

"So what do they look like?" Gabe asks, as they get into the Jeep.

"Scary," she says, in a tone that says "this conversation is over". Gabe glances at her curiously.

"I saw one," she says, finally. "It was-"

She's interrupted by Gabe's pants playing Nickelback. He takes out his phone, swipes it. "Jess-hi... yeah, I was just going to call you."

### Chapter Seven

Melinda doesn't know whether to be amused or to strangle him. She knew, intellectually, that after they took her away there was no indication that she was ever coming back, and that Gabe probably would meet someone new. On the other hand, he did follow her directions, driving three-hundred miles east, to rescue her, and buy her Coke. And he looks absolutely ridiculous when he's trying to explain to his real girlfriend why he's in Oklahoma with another girl. Still, the sting of having been replaced surprises her with how strong it is, and as Gabe stammers out one implausible lie after another, she feels a knot grow in her throat. Eventually, he hangs up, looking distinctly unsatisfied.

"Look, Melinda, I'm sorry. I meant to tell you. I just-I just never-"

He gives up. They drive in silence for a while, while she absorbs the shock of realizing that Gabe has a girlfriend. And then she realizes something. "You lied to her."

"What?"

"You lied to her. You said you had some family business."

"Yeah, so?"

"You drive three-hundred miles to save me, but you lie to your girlfriend?"

Gabe slams on the brakes. They skid to a stop on the shoulder, and he puts on his blinkers. "Fine," he snaps. "What do you want me to say? That you're more to me than a kid sister?"

"It would be a start," she says, sullenly.

"When they took you away, it was like you'd died," he says, his voice strained from holding back tears. "We had so much fun together, remember?"

She laughs, in spite of her tears. She remembers, as he does, the state fairs they went to, picking apples, going fly fishing. "Riding the Ferris wheel," she says.

"Corn dogs and funnel cakes," he replies.

"Winning that giant stuffed dog."

"Second place in pie-eating."

Gabe starts the Jeep again, checking his mirrors even though the highway is abysmally empty. He takes them back to the motel, where they eat the last of their dinner and watch some more Law & Order. It's a disturbing episode, one that's a bit too close to their situation-a sixteen-year-old girl going out with an older man, and the detectives trying to charge him with rape-and Gabe turns off the TV and looks at her from his bed. "Her name is Jessica Meyers," he says. "She's pre-law, in my class at Lincoln."

For some reason, it upsets her more to hear that he has a life that doesn't include her, than it does that he has a girlfriend. She burrows under the blanket on her bed, trying to think of what it all means. All she can think of to say, though, is, "We need to head to Vegas tomorrow."

### Chapter Eight

"So, have you actually got a plan?" Gabe asks.

They're on their way to Las Vegas, following Route 40 through the Texas Panhandle. It depresses her, having grown up on the edge of the Rockies in Colorado, how flat everything is. The sky and the earth seem to be two shades of blinding white under the broiling sun, and the only thing breaking the monotony of the plains is an occasional house. Who the hell lives out here, she wonders, but she doesn't dwell on it any more than to wonder if someone could have seen Caleb from the road. If he was walking-she has no idea how Caleb is getting around, only that he is. Gabe has taken the top off the Jeep, the better to let the wind blow, but it's a hot wind, and Melinda is reminded of the convection oven her mother had installed the year before she died, and how much quicker it cooked meat. Luckily she's not the type to burn, but she can feel the heat around her, sucking the water-the life-out of her body.

"Not a clue," she says. She's taken off the plaid Keds and put her feet up on the dashboard, enjoying the feel of the wind on her bare skin. The cult had mandated that women wear oppressive long-sleeved dresses that covered everything, skimming no more than one inch from the ground. Cut-offs and a t-shirt meant that she was practically naked, by their standards. Her knees, she notices, have gotten knobbier. She knows that she has gotten skinnier since she has been with the Knights-but she looks practically scrawny, now. No wonder Gabe can't get over the whole "kid sister" thing.

She's been trying to think of what they'll do when they find Caleb, but she keeps getting sidetracked with thoughts about Gabe and this Jessica Meyers he says is his girlfriend, even though he keeps lying to her. Now Gabe is "helping my uncle move a few things". She had to confess, though, that if she didn't have this gift, "Chasing down a rogue angel" was a lot less plausible.

Caleb. What are they going to do about Caleb?

What can we do? she wonders. Ask him to stop? "If we say 'please' nicely enough maybe he'll listen," she says, sarcastically, but Gabe doesn't laugh.

As the sun browns her skin, she wonders why Caleb didn't try to escape the compound. They'd kept him in a simple kennel. The elders didn't know any spells or charms that could bind an angel-or a demon, for that matter-they simply kept him in chains and beat him every moment they had.

Chains.

She sits up in her seat suddenly. "I just realized what an idiot I was-"

"And I just realized we're being followed," Gabe says. "Don't look," he adds, just as she's about to glance in the mirror. "If they think we've noticed them they might take a shotgun to us again."

"Shit," she mutters, settling back into her seat. "Are you sure?"

"In case you hadn't noticed, we're like, the only car on this stretch of highway for miles around. And it's been with us since we left the motel."

"Maybe it just hasn't reached its exit yet," she says, but she knows, even as she says it, that it's a false hope. If Gabe-sensible, reliable, logical Gabe-thinks they're being followed, they probably are.

"What are you going to do?"

"Hope that it runs out of gas before we do," Gabe says grimly. She checks the fuel gauge. They've got a quarter-tank left.

The sign on the side of the road tells them that the next rest stop is ten miles farther on. They can make it, but it'll be close, and they'll be coasting in on the fumes. Still, they don't have a choice. Gabe looks at her, and offers her his hand. At least we'll go down fighting, kid, his look says. She takes it. Amen.

By the time they pull into the rest stop, the engine is coughing, and it's all Gabe can do to ease the Jeep next to the fuel pump. They both get out, their stomachs churning in anticipation for a knock-down-all-out fight. Melinda flicks her uncle's lighter open, then closed. She's not sure she's suicidal enough to actually blow up the gas station on purpose, but she's sure she's not going back to the compound.

"Act normal," Gabe says, tossing her the squeegee that was sitting in a bucket of soapy water next to the pump. He tells her to keep an eye out for a blue sedan. She catches it and begins to wipe the windshield, watching the highway, while Gabe pays for a tank and thunks the nozzle into place. Twenty-five gallons of liquid explosive rush into his tank-she wonders if Gabe realizes how desperate she is.

The car never passes. Five minutes later, the tank is filled up, the windshield is clean, and Gabe is buying them stale hot dogs and chewing gum from the store. A semi roars by, then two pickups, but no blue sedan. Ten minutes later, and they've run out of excuses to stay there, and Gabe eases back onto the highway, checking both directions. Nothing.

"Weird," he mutters. "There wasn't any other exit, I'm sure of it," he says, but he keeps going.

"I don't think it's the Knights," she says, glancing backwards. The road behind them is empty, as far as she can see. "There were only ten cars on the compound, and Caleb blew up most of them, if not all of them."

But they keep checking the mirror until they get close to Albuquerque, where the increased traffic makes it impossible to keep track of which car was behind them and when. Gabe drives through the city, pausing to buy toothbrushes and fresh socks for them, and pulls into a seedy motel five miles outside the city limits. He parks the Jeep, and goes around the back to make arrangements to stay there. The sun is sinking, and the desert air cools off a lot faster than Melinda realizes. She digs around in the bag of thrift store clothes, and finds a sweatshirt. It's slightly too small and smells faintly of mothballs, but she puts it on anyway.

Presently Gabe returns, satisfied. "Fifteen bucks a night, can you believe it?"

She gets out of the car and stretches her legs. "There'd better not be bugs in the sheets," she says, but at this point she doesn't really care-as long as they're not in the Jeep, she'll be happy. She has to dive into the back seat to get the stuff that Gabe had bought earlier. "So which room?" she asks, as she loops the plastic bags around her wrists.

Gabe doesn't answer. "Which room?" she asks, louder this time. She stands up, and sees him staring. She follows his gaze.

Straight to a blue sedan.

### Chapter Nine

There was a company policy against picking up hitchhikers, and there was a company policy against picking up hookers, and there was a company policy against driving more than six hours at a stretch. None of which had ever kept Jimmy Keegan from picking up hitchhikers or whores, though he was almost religious about keeping to his six-hour limit. He'd picked up more than one college student in his years on the road, and they were usually glad to give him what he wanted, in return for an extra thirty miles in his rig. He never had any trouble persuading them. The view of the open road and miles of nothing did that for him.

The young man walking alongside the road, for instance, seemed to be just the type of person who could use a ride. His fair hair-kid with color like that would burn up quicker than toast in this heat. He slows the empty big rig down and lowers the passenger window. "Need a lift?" he asks.

The young man smiles at him. He's even good-looking, too, in an androgynous, elfin way.

"Well, come on up," he says.

The kid-hard to tell how old he is-clambers up the side. He has to jump to reach the handle to pull himself in, but he manages to get himself inside the cab. Only now does Keegan realize that the kid doesn't have any baggage. Or shoes.

"What're you doing out here?" Keegan asks.

The kid shrugs. Fine, Keegan thinks. He'd prefer to have a talker, but he could deal with a silent one, too. "Hope you don't mind Aerosmith," Keegan says. The kid stares out the window, so Keegan pops the CD into the player, and as Train Kept a-Rollin' starts up, he casts a wary glance at his new passenger and puts the rig into gear. Kid's seventy pounds, soaking wet, Keegan finds himself thinking. I could take him, he reassures himself. Keegan might be starting a beer gut, but he's only been driving for five years, and he can still bench press two-hundred pounds. Then he shakes his head. What're you so worried about, Jimmy boy? But the feeling won't go away.

The miles roll away. In this part of the country, the only thing that changes is the crop-corn, wheat, soy, and there's an occasional herd of cattle that can be seen from the road. They've passed exactly two trees in forty minutes, and the next one is half an hour away on the horizon. Keegan thumps his thumbs against the steering wheel, keeping time with the music. He doesn't know if the kid is annoyed by this, but it soothes his nerves. He can't figure out why he's so jittery. He's picked up college athletes before, linebackers and basketball players, and never felt threatened. But this kid-he just doesn't know.

Finally-two albums and a gas tank later-Keegan stops, unable to stand his passenger's presence for another minute. "Look, kid. Would you at least tell me where you're going?"

"I am going where you take me," the young man answers, still staring out the window. He hasn't moved at all since he got in, Keegan realizes.

"And where is that, exactly?" Keegan asks.

"Hell."

The finality of the answer startles him for a moment. "Are you, like, a Mormon, or something?" he asks.

"I am something."

Christ, I sure know how to pick 'em, Keegan thinks, rolling his eyes.

"You wish me to pay," the kid says, suddenly, turning to face him. He smiles again, and it's all Keegan can do to keep his pants from tenting. He is more beautiful now than he was when he got in-his pale eyes are larger, his smile is somehow more charming... more lovely. It must be a trick of the light, Keegan thinks, but even his admiration for the boy sitting before him can't quell the feeling that there is something terribly wrong.

"I shall gift you," the kid says, and suddenly he's no longer a kid, but a man, beautifully sculpted and statuesque, sitting next to him, giving him a look that can only mean, "Come and get it, buddy." Keegan feels himself leaning over.

The man-kid-thing-reaches across the seat for him and touches Keegan's cheek, so softly, so gently. It feels like a benediction, like grace-and then all of a sudden, it turns into a searing pain of unbelievable agony, but Keegan realizes that he can't move, or scream. He hears a hiss, and feels something drip on his lap-and he realizes my face is melting. He wants to move, wants to get the hell out of this cab and away from this-this-whatever it is-but he's frozen in place, and can't do anything. Open your mouth. He doesn't know where the words come from-neither of them spoke-but he feels his mouth opening, farther and farther until he hears the crunch of his jaw breaking-and the thing sticks his hand in it. His entire hand. And then his elbow disappears. And then his shoulder. And then-

It's a small mercy that he's dead long before his body rips apart in a splatter of blood and flesh.

The man that is not Jimmy Keegan sits in the driver's seat of the big rig, feeling the steering wheel and the pedals, listening to the engine as it purrs. He puts it into gear, and the powerful engine surges to life, and begins rolling down the highway, faster and faster. And faster.

A comet, spewing diesel fumes and flame, heading for Albuquerque.

### Chapter Ten

Gabe pushes Melinda behind him. She clutches his arm. The back of her mind is aware that this is an awkward gesture, given that he has a girlfriend. The rest of her is only aware of the terror, and that Gabe is clutching her hand almost as hard as she is his arm. And that the windows of the sedan are deeply tinted, rendering the glass opaque in the setting sun.

"I swear-" Gabe sputters. He opens the passenger door and reaches into the storage compartment. He fishes out a flashlight, one of those heavy-duty steel Maglites that are fifteen inches long and could easily kill someone. "Get back in the car, Melinda," he says.

She does what he says, and starts the engine for him, while he goes around the front of the Jeep, never taking his eyes off of the sedan. He rockets out of the parking lot, back onto the highway, turning on his headlights and buckling his seat belt as he goes. "How the hell...?" Gabe mutters, but he doesn't finish.

They drive in the dark for several more hours before the cold finally becomes intolerable. Gabe stops and puts the top back on the Jeep, then switches off his lights and drives off the road in the dark. "They weren't following us," Melinda says. She's kept her eyes glued to the rearview mirror for the entire way. There hadn't been a headlight in sight.

"God, but I hope you're right," Gabe says. He gets out. Melinda wants to tell him to get back in, because her stomach is still in knots and she's not entirely sure that they're safe. She can't decipher why she's so nervous, only that she is. "What're you doing?" she asks, instead, unlocking her door and getting out.

"Getting out the emergency blankets," Gabe says. "Oh, wait," he says. There's a click, and suddenly in the darkness of the desert there's a blade of white. He's turned on the flashlight, and he adjusts it so that the beam looks like a fan. "Better?" he asks.

"Are you insane?" Melinda shrieks, grabbing the light and turning it off. "You've just let them see where we are!"

"There's nobody around for miles," Gabe says, sullenly. "You said so," but he keeps the light off, going by touch and starlight. He lifts the trunk liner, and there, along with the spare tire, is a small emergency kit-blankets, stale granola bars, road flares, a hand-cranked radio and flashlight, and a bag of kitty litter. "Hungry?" he asks, handing her a bar.

"Not really," she says, watching the desert and the road they came on. "I just have a bad feeling."

"Nothing's going to get us," Gabe says, but the uncertainty in his voice belies his reassurance. "I just don't understand how that blue sedan could have gotten past us. Route 40 is the only interstate around. He'd have had to be doing, like, three-hundred or something to blow past the small towns and come out ahead of us."

They get back into the Jeep, and Gabe reclines his seat all the way. "It's not too bad," he says, wrapping a blanket around him. "I've done it a few times, when I got snowed in."

"Do you love her?" she asks, lowering her seat so that it, too, is almost horizontal.

"Don't ask me that," Gabe groans.

In the desert darkness, the only sounds are the Jeep clinking as it cools and the ghostly howl of the wind above them, carrying the yipping noise of coyotes. Gabe whistles occasionally-he's already asleep, and who can blame him? Squinting for five hours into a blinding landscape would take it out of anybody. Melinda sighs, wishes she has a book, and settles for naming the constellations that she can remember from seventh-grade astronomy. She's amazed at the brilliance of the stars and the shimmery band of light crossing the sky. The Milky Way, she thinks. Gemini. The Big Dipper. Occasionally there's the hum of an all-night semi going by, or the whining buzz of a car. It's quiet out here in the desert. There's no indication that there's anything wrong. So why can't she rid herself of this feeling that something incredibly shitty is going to happen?

It starts as a low rumble, so quiet that she can only hear it if she holds her breath, and then only between heartbeats. She sits up and looks around. It takes a moment to find it-an orange-ish ball of light, coming towards them from the horizon. It's weird. It looks like a fireball. She stares at it, trying to figure out what it might be. A really well-lit semi, perhaps?

As the noise gets louder, she realizes that it's moving really, really fast, almost impossibly so. And that it's heading directly for them. She shakes Gabe, but he swats her away. "Not now, Mom," he mutters.

"Gabe!" she hisses. "Gabe!"

He bolts awake. "What?" he demands.

She points at the glowing ball of flame coming at them. "Get us out of here," she pleads.

"Christ," Gabe mutters nervously, but he pops the driver seat up and turns the ignition. The engine coughs-and stalls out. "Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!" he says, as he tries again, but the Jeep just won't start.

### Chapter Eleven

The fire ball is streaming closer and closer, eating up the distance impossibly quickly. They can see, now, outlined against the flames, the metal skeleton of what was once a big rig, barreling down at them like a giant fireball. Melinda can see, in the driver's seat, a blinding-white aura, but the figure silhouetted in black is not the boy she pulled out of the barn two days ago.

A white light emanates from the figure's mouth. He looks like he's smiling, and where his eyes should be there are two glowing red embers, and charnel lighting rings his body. Through the roar of the engine and the flames that run it, they hear a cackle, and Melinda throws herself over Gabe a split second before the fireball slams into the Jeep. God don't let him die, she thinks. The roar of the explosion rips through them, but the flames wrap around them. God don't let him die. The Jeep disintegrates instantaneously into a million swirling metal flakes, shredding them both. God don't let him die, as the world around them dissolves into flame.

Melinda opens an eye and sees the creature that was once a scared, frightened boy coming towards them, black as sin with limbs of smoke and flame. Behind him are a pair of silvery, smoky wings, but this is no angel. And Melinda, strangely enough, becomes insanely angry. She risked her life to save him, and he does this to her? "How dare you?" she screams.

He actually stops. He considers her, and somewhere in the galaxy her rational mind is thinking that she should be terrified right about now, but her fury is so great that she actually stands up to meet him. "How dare you?" she screams again, with the full force of her anger behind her, and her voice changes-there's something underneath it, a register of pure power that physically forces him and the flaming inferno back. She's just as surprised as he apparently is, and that detracts from the purity of her rage. A part of her mind now realizes that the flames have not engulfed her, or Gabe, and it's not for his lack of trying. As she starts to wonder about this, her fury ebbs, and he pushes back. The circle of safety in which she and Gabe have been sheltered from the fire starts to shrink, and the terror comes back to her in full force. She shrinks against Gabe, trying to protect him from the flames, trying not to get burned, to summon back the anger against the fear. It's not working. The flames are getting dangerously close-the heat emanating from them burns her. She closes her eyes, hoping that it won't hurt too badly.

And all of a sudden, it's gone. The flames, the smoke, the creature. It's silent-all around her the ground is smoking, covered in ashes-the only patch of desert sand that isn't burnt is the patch that Gabe is lying on. He's alive-breathing, at any rate. She doesn't have the wherewithal to see if he's truly okay, because two men in gray suits and sunglasses are standing where the creature was. And behind them is the blue sedan.

### The First Voice

Song of Teeth Part 1

### Prologue

EXCERPT FROM THE DIARY of Adalina Espanosa, April 13th, 1604. Translated from the original Spanish by the South Carolina Society for the Preservation of Historical Documents.

"AH, WHAT A SURPRISE today! My hands are still shaking as I write this. I must calm my nerves. Even Mama is getting nervous from watching me. But I don't dare describe to her what has happened, or her heart might start beating too fast and she may pass out, as she tends to do."

"Where to begin? All the events seem mad, even as I prepare to write them-I must get them down soon, or I will stop believing them myself. From the beginning, Adalina."

"Today was abnormally, atrociously hot. Every time I begin to adore the deep mystery of these jungles, the next day I am reminded why I despise this pestilent, moss-drenched place. Ah, my Espana, how I miss you! Today was one of those despicable days. I was absolutely dripping through my clothes while doing my chores, before the sun had even reached its high point. So, after collecting the eggs and helping with the milking, I went to The Spring to cool myself and draw some fresh water for the house."

"I filled the buckets, and then decided to sit for a while on the edge of the wall and rest. Have I described The Spring before on these pages? It is a mystical place, where the water bubbles up from deep beneath the earth all the way to the surface. We did not even have to build a well to extract this fresh and pure water. One need only recline peacefully on the stone ledge that we raised around it, and reach in for a palm full of the cleanest, coolest water you could hope to find in this cesspit. Father Miguel says it is an unholy spout from the depths of Hell, though this has never stopped him drinking from that water instead of the swamp. I always enjoyed the serenity there, but after today, I am inclined to agree with Father!"

"As I was relaxing on the stone ledge, trailing my hand in the cool water, I suddenly felt a horrible pinching on my fingers! It felt as if my hand was being crushed by the blades of two saws smashed together. Terrified, I withdrew my hand from the water and held up a baby crocodile, its jaws snapped tight around my three prominent fingers, my blood spilling between its teeth! Never have I screamed so in my life, and may I never scream so again, by the blessing of Mother Mary!"

"Yet, I hold off on the most terrifying description of this horrible, horned lizard, for I fear the workings of the Great Deceiver Himself, and I fear attracting His attention. Give me pause, for I must steady my nerves."

"All right, I have returned. A dram of sherry sits in my belly, fixing me against fear. I will now describe the true nature of this monstrous creature, which I am convinced was a spawn of demons, swimming up through the bowels of the earth to gnaw upon my blood."

"All together, the creature was perhaps as long as my forearm, half of that length consisting of its tail. Its eyes sat upon the crest of its head, its jaws stretched long and awful, lined with so many teeth that I can not see how it could have possibly closed its mouth. At first, it looked very much like the treacherous alligators that we have sometimes encountered in the most brackish, evil of waters, often mimicking a log floating by. However, this creature was more gruesome by far."

"First, its cold skin was not dark brown and log-like, but pale. So pale I could see the movements of its inner parts through its skin-like the skin of Death's horse that will come for us all in the End Times. Even its eyes were so clear that the blood shone through them like the gleaming red eyes of Lucifer."

"Worse than its color were its hands. Yes, hands! They were somewhat like the webbed lizard claws of the alligators, but its fingers were stretched long and thin, like the hands of a human. I shudder to recall this, but it had its cross-breed hands wrapped around my thumb even as its jaws clenched firm against my bones, as if it were a human infant grasping its mother's hand while suckling! My stomach churns just thinking of its ungodly, mutated form."

"Like a fool, I had not thought to bring a companion with me to fetch water, so no one heard my screaming as I flailed around, trying to fling this creature off my hand. It held on stubbornly and I became dizzy from the excruciating pain, heat, and loss of blood which splattered down my arm and all across the ground. I screamed and screamed until my throat burned. I was so frightened that the thought of trying to walk back to the fort alone, with that thing crunching my bones had paralyzed me. Then, in the midst of my screams, I was stopped cold by a sound more terrifying than anything I have described thus far."

"For a moment, I thought I was hearing an echo of my scream, which would have puzzled me more-being in the open jungle-had I the wits to contemplate it. Soon, however, I realized I was not hearing an echo, but the crocodilian creature itself was screaming! Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that it was mimicking my scream, for the tone was pitched perfectly to my own."

"I hardly need say that this astounded me so much that my body froze completely, and in that moment, the creature released me from its jaws and dropped to the ground. I cannot say if the sound emanated from its throat, for its mouth did not move, but it wailed a sustained note at me for longer than a goodly animal should be able to breathe. Were it not coming from such an abhorrent thing, I would almost imagine the sound to be a chime from a cathedral organ. I suspect the creature may have bewitched me with this tone, for I was too astonished to move as it crawled up the stone ledge and dove back under the water. How my skin shivers to remember its hands gripping the stones like a human!"

"All day, my mind has been in a daze over this. When I had my hand treated and bandaged by the doctor, I told him it had been crushed by a rock. What else could I have said? To my great relief, he assured me that my fingers were not damaged beyond repair and I will have full function of them again."

"What worries me most is the knowledge that a nest of these creatures lives beneath our precarious settlement, in the very water that sustains us. For surely, any place where this youngling would be must also house its parents and siblings. Who knows but there might be an infestation of them, ready to ambush us whenever we draw water? I do not know who to consult on this matter. Mama will likely die of fright, and Papa is too quick-tempered for matters such as this. One thing I am sure of, we must proceed cautiously for we know not how many of these creatures exist, nor how large they may become. He is a bit of a soft-skinned fool, but Father Miguel may be my only reasonable option. Tomorrow, I shall describe the entire incident to him and ask his advice. I can only pray that he will believe me."

In Spanish, La Fuente, the original name for Archopolis' underground water source. Historians believe the name referred to a natural spring, rather than a fountain.?

### Chapter One

Present Day

"HEY, MARK," Aaron nudged his side with an elbow, "there's that weird girl I was telling you about."

Mark turned in the direction of Aaron's elbow. A frazzle-haired girl wearing worn jeans and a tee shirt was just turning into an alley across the street. She clutched a small notebook below her chin, and her head fiercely swiveled down, up, down, up, as if her eyes were photocopying the entire landscape directly onto the paper. As she stepped into the alley, just before her skin perfectly melded with the dark shadows against the brick, she looked back over her shoulder. Her searching glance almost immediately found Mark and Aaron as they watched from their cafe table. The furious brightness of her eyes, even from that distance, stabbed Mark's breath and held it in his throat. He felt a wave of guilt, as if she was accusing him of invading her privacy, but she quickly continued around the corner out of sight.

Both Mark and Aaron exhaled at the same time. "See what I mean?" Aaron raised his eyebrow. "Kind of...off."

"Um, I guess." Mark nodded slightly, still watching the alley entrance. "What's her name?"

Aaron scrunched the corner of his mouth. "Her name? She's just the weird girl. It's too bad you're not in my biology class, so you can hear the bizarre questions she asks."

"What kind of questions?"

"Ah, I can't remember. Always about lizards or something. No, crocodiles! Yeah, she's always going on about crocodiles, no matter what the teacher's talking about. The other day we were starting the chapter on 'reproduction,'" Aaron drawled the word out for emphasis, "which is pretty much the only time we get to talk about sex, right? And there's lizard girl interrupting to ask how alligators lay eggs or something. What a weirdo, right?"

Mark tilted his head in commiseration and chuckled. "Very strange. Maybe not as weird as you, but then again, she is prettier than you."

Aaron gasped melodramatically. "Me, weird?" Switching into a high-pitched British accent, he whined, "Why, whatever gave you that idea, good sir?"

"Oh, just a gut feeling I've always had about you. Plus, I've watched you snort a packet of mustard for a dollar."

"Now, now, wait; let's not get distracted by my talents here. Back up. I think you just said lizard girl is pretty! Do you have a crush on her now?"

Mark rolled his eyes and quickly slurped his ice coffee, wincing at the cold jab to his forehead. "Whatever. Let's get back to studying. My test is tomorrow, and I have to be at work in an hour."

Always quick to be distracted, Aaron went back to quizzing him on battles of World War II. Mark tried to concentrate on pronouncing French names, on the sweet chill of vanilla coffee and on the heavy sun; but a pair of eyes kept cutting through his mind-their vivid clarity against the damp afternoon.

AS MUCH as he hated the lingering stench of ketchup that clung to his clothes after work, Mark hated even more the stale, faintly rotten air that always drifted up when he opened his front door. Old mildew, tired carpets, fetid remnants of food long since thrown out of the fridge. It was the unmistakable odor of a house that had stopped caring long ago.

Dropping his keys in the hideous ceramic bowl he had made in first grade, Mark called out, "Hey, I'm home. Anyone here?"

No one answered, but he heard the creak of his brother's steps in the hallway and the careless thud of the bathroom door closing. Sighing at what he knew would be a long wait for the shower; Mark went to the kitchen to make himself a sandwich. There was just enough peanut butter left for one or two more sandwiches-he would have to remember to pick some up tomorrow. He could barely taste that sweet earthiness that he loved over the scent of burnt hamburger clinging to his nostrils.

After nearly 20 minutes, Mark heard a flush, the bathroom door click open, and his brother creaked in. Maybe because he had always been so tall and gaunt, Jacob always twisted and stooped as low as possible when he walked, barely lifting his feet, as if he was embarrassed to take up any space.

"Hey," he muttered to Mark as he shuffled to the refrigerator. A sickly, oily sweetness wafted after him.

"Ugh, Jake, have you been smoking again?" Mark wrinkled his nose. "You reek."

"Yeah, well, so do you." Jacob grabbed a sports drink and chugged the entire bottle while holding the refrigerator door open. "'Sides, it keeps me relaxed."

Mark snorted. "What, relaxed from all that school and work you don't have?" Jacob ignored him.

The doorbell rang. Mark got up to answer it, since Jacob was very skilled at ignoring everything around him when it was inconvenient.

At the door was a petite woman whose heavy makeup could not hide the weariness tugging down her eyelids and cheeks. Her lustrous black hair was carelessly knotted back, and she balanced a silent, plump baby on her hip.

"Hey, Mark. Jake here?"

"Hi, Maria." Mark held open the door. "Yeah, he's in the kitchen." The baby stared hugely at his taut ginger curls as they passed by, as always. Mark was used to the odd looks, being the only one of his family who had inherited the trait. "How's little Robbie?" he asked.

The baby wriggled his arms at the sound of his own name, but Maria looked too tired to stop and talk. "Roberto's fine, thanks," she said without turning her head. Anticipating an angry conversation he would not want to overhear, Mark hurried to the shower.

Even through the rush of the water, Mark could still hear the swells of voices, distorted hollow and harsh through the tiles. Even Robbie, normally so quiet, started wailing. The cry trilled sharp and high like a distant, lonely bird. As Mark finished his shower and reached for a towel, the front door slammed so hard the medicine cabinet shuddered, and then silence squatted over the house.

On his way down the hall, Jacob walked past him, muttering. "Crazy bitch. What does she want me to do? It's her baby." He wasn't looking at Mark, but slowed down, apparently pausing for validation.

"Uh, well, it's yours too," was all Mark could think of saying. Jacob hunched even lower and opened his mouth in a scowl, but faltered at words. For a moment, he looked so ungainly and awkward, like a lost gosling, that Mark felt a bitter wave of protection sweep over him. But he had nothing comforting to say to his brother, and Jacob stomped away to his bedroom.

Mark collapsed on his bed and did not bother fighting against the exhaustion that quickly pulled down heavily on every muscle. He did not even hear his mother come home from her late shift, as he usually would. Crossing into sleep, his thoughts unspooled in a tangle: his brother's childishly frightened, bloodshot eyes; Maria's dull glitter; tiny Roberto's patient wonderment; and especially the wild-haired girl striding around corners, twisting around to gaze back at him, her eyes flashing over and over.

### Chapter Two

A CRUEL BEAM of late morning sunlight pierced Mark's eyes as he rushed around the edge of the library door. How could he have forgotten to print off his report yesterday? He feverishly hoped he had arrived early enough in the lunch period that he wouldn't have to wait for a computer. Too many times had he seen his brother in this position and give up; the memory of Jacob's despondency last night only made Mark more anxious.

With a simultaneous lurch of relief and nervousness, he saw one computer open: next to the girl from the alley. Although she still wore plain jeans and a tee shirt, today they were clean and stylish-a detail he would never usually notice. He sat down and logged on, looking from the corner of his eye for any reaction from her. She stared at her screen, clicking swiftly through websites, apparently oblivious to the fact that another person was even sitting beside her. A cold sliver ran through Mark's chest-relief? Insult?-When he realized that he had turned and stared directly at her. She must really think he was invading her privacy now. He cleared his throat politely.

"Hi. Um, look, I didn't mean to stare at you yesterday at the cafe. I'm sorry."

The girl stopped briefly and studied him with a sideways look. Mark tried to imagine how his freckled, timid smile might appear to her. "Yeah, all right," she said, turning back to her research.

Mark tried to focus on his computer again, running mindlessly through his report, sending it to the printer. But now he had seen those eyes close up-thickest brown with specks of gold-and he could not concentrate. He couldn't sit there and say nothing.

"I'm Mark, by the way."

For a moment, she hesitated, and he was sure she would ignore him. Then she turned fully towards him and extended her hand. "I'm Tatiana."

He involuntarily grinned as they shook hands, noting the smooth dryness of her palms contrasting the rough scrape of her fingertips. "Can I ask what you're working on?"

She shrugged. "Just some personal reading."

"Oh. I just caught a glimpse of a lizard, and thought maybe it was a biology project or something." Tatiana started to scrunch her lips to the side and frown. "By accident! I wasn't trying to pry."

She relaxed. "It's just some old legend about crocodiles living underneath the city. Nothing anyone else finds interesting."

Mark thought he could detect a hint of blush beneath her skin. "Is it less interesting than old diaries and letters from history? Because no one understands why I love reading that stuff, but I'm fine admitting I'm an old man."

For the first time, Tatiana smiled. Heat rushed to Mark's face, which he knew must glare through his pale skin, which made his blood even hotter. If she noticed, Tatiana pretended not to show it.

"Maybe we should swap old people stories someday," she said.

"How about this afternoon? We can meet after school at the cafe from yesterday and start over." The words came from some other part of Mark's brain that he could not seem to control. He was never able to speak with girls so directly.

Crossing her arms and leaning back, Tatiana gazed intently at him for several long seconds, searching for any sign of insincerity. Her face was so smooth and blank; Mark began to be afraid that he had said exactly the wrong thing.

Instead, she finally said, "Yeah, all right. I don't know about you, Old Man Mark, and I kind of like that."

Mark could only flush even redder, which she acknowledged with a mischievous smile before she left.

MARK STARED intently into the clear whirls of melting ice in his vanilla coffee, sipping so slowly he imagined tasting the minutes themselves. Yet, his heart insisted on beating faster and faster the more he tried to slow down time. She would not come. Why would she come, when all he had done from her perspective was stare at her too much? The coffee dissolved paler and paler.

Then, a soft cough across the table, and he finally looked up.

"Hi." Tatiana dropped her backpack on a chair with a solid clang and sat down.

"Hi. Um, would you like a coffee?"

She shook her head. An awkward pause started swelling over the table, but she quickly broke it. "I know that kid you were with yesterday, Aaron. I'm surprised you guys are friends."

"Oh, why's that?"

"Just doesn't seem to fit. He's always talking and messing with the lab equipment in my biology class. Every time the teacher says 'organism' he says 'orgasm'-every time. I mean, he's no worse than half the boys in school, but you two seem like you would clash a lot. No offense. Maybe you guys are best pals or something, I don't know."

Looking down at the table to hide his smile, Mark replied, "Aaron can be very... animated, as my mother used to call him. He'd kill me if he heard me say it, but he's actually a softie. We've been friends since third grade."

"Ah." Tatiana gazed off in silence at a pigeon strolling by. Conversation was obviously not one of her strengths. This only endeared her more to Mark, who was often the quiet one among his friends.

"So, I want to hear more about these crocodile legends. Is that what you were reading earlier?"

"Yeah. And about fossils. That 'lizard' you saw was actually a drawing of an extinct ancient crocodile. There are a bunch of stories about crocodiles living in the sewers here, even some really old stories from when the city was built, and a lot of the stories sound like they're describing this one type of crocodile, but it was supposed to have gone extinct thousands of years ago..." Tatiana trailed off, realizing she had started waving her hands in distraction, and sat back in her chair. "Anyway, you're probably not interested in anything like that."

As she had been speaking, her already bright face had flushed with an intensity he couldn't remember seeing in anyone before. That she had stopped so suddenly almost made him physically ache. "No, keep going. Like I said, I'm kind of a nerd for history and legends. What do the stories say?"

"Well, I was just reading this one today from way back when Archopolis was just a little village in the woods. Like, when the Spanish were just settling this area. This lady said she went to the spring where they got their water, and got bitten by a baby crocodile when she was filling her jar. Except this wasn't like the normal crocodiles around here-she swore it had no color, clear almost, and it had little hands that it used to grab onto her fingers. There are a lot of stories kind of like that, too. Crocs with no color, walking up on their legs like dogs, using their hands, weird stuff like that."

"Huh. So, you think these stories might be real? That they were talking about some kind of ancient crocodile that was supposed to be extinct?"

Tatiana turned her face down, embarrassed again. "You just think it's stupid. Everyone does."

"No!" Mark instinctively reached out to touch her knee, then immediately pulled his hand back. "I don't think it's stupid. I mean, I don't know. I've just started reading some of Archopolis' history myself. I didn't know they had built the whole city on top of where the old city flooded. Some of the accounts I've been reading mentioned myths about crocodiles or lizards or whatever, but I figured they were just superstitions, like pet alligators getting flushed down people's toilets and living in the sewers."

Tatiana tapped her finger on the table and pulled her lips tight in thought. Tentatively, she asked, "Did you know you can still go down in some parts of the old city?"

Mark sat up straighter. "Really? I thought it was all blocked off."

"Well, not if you know the way in. Would...would you like to go?"

"Yeah, of course! But how do you know the way?"

She shrugged. "I don't remember. I've been exploring the underground since I was a kid. It's kind of my hobby. Hey, what's your number?"

Caught off guard, Mark recited his number without question while Tatiana typed on her phone. A second later, his phone buzzed.

"There," she said. "Meet me at that address after the offices close. I usually wait 'til at least seven. Bring a flashlight and boots."

Before he could even open the message, Tatiana had already swung on her backpack as if it were light as a shirt, and walked away.

Suddenly, Mark thought of his brother, sitting in the house all day, and the perpetual stalemate of his parents' separation; the contrast of seeing someone so decisive excited him as much as watching her small figure slip through the crowds like a sharp-winged swift.

### Chapter Three

AS MARK STEPPED OFF the bus, the city's mossy greens were already deepening to indigo shadows. Following his phone's directions, he looked for some landmark in the buildings, but these were mainly old stone offices freckled occasionally by a forgotten light. Paper blankets were tented over sleeping bodies curled in doorways; these nearly-dead forms and Mark were the only ones on the streets. The directions ended at one of the indistinguishable buildings near a subway entrance. The time was 7:30, and he was alone.

Afraid that worrying about being stood up would start to develop into a pattern, Mark started worrying anyway. Maybe she had been here at 7:00, seen that he hadn't shown up, and gone off without him? His hands started shaking at the image of her furious face. True to the developing pattern, Tatiana emerged from the subway stairs just before his anxiety reached a panic.

"Oh, there you are," she said, waving him forward. "Come on, I've been waiting for you down here." He didn't dare bring up her poor directions.

Through the bleach and urine-tinged subway stairwells she led him, veering off past the ticket machines and pay phones, down a long hallway with Private Entry and Employees Only on every door. Though they had seen no one else, Mark kept glancing around with uncertain guilt. He felt vaguely invasive, like they were sneaking up the driveway to a stranger's house. Tatiana, changed back to her grungy clothes and a smaller backpack, walked with the confidence of someone absolute in her belief that she belonged. She stopped at an unmarked brown door near the end of the hall, glanced back to make sure no one had seen them, and pushed the door open for Mark. Instinctively, he hesitated.

"Come on!" Tatiana flicked her hand towards the doorway. "It's ok; I go down here all the time. There are no cameras in the employees' section, if that's what you're worried about."

Embracing her spirit of decisiveness, Mark slipped through the door, and not just because disappointing this girl would be as frightening as disappointing a bobcat. A thrill was starting to clench his stomach-a much more exhilarating tightness than his usual responsibilities.

"How did you find out about this way?" he whispered as he passed through. The door opened into a very narrow passage, faintly lit by widely-spaced, caged bulbs.

"When I was little, my dad took me on a trip exploring the city. He taught me how most people won't even try to open doors without permission." She clicked the door shut behind them. "So, a lot of access tunnels, like this one, aren't even locked. That's the one thing I learned from him. I just open every door I can until I find one that takes me where I want to go."

Mark followed her down the tunnel, which was only wide enough for one person. "And where do you want to go?" he asked.

"Someplace no one else knows about. Yet."

They hurried through the access tunnel, turning down forks in the path, surrounded by the echoed rain of their footsteps. Another confusing thrill pinched Mark's stomach at the thought that he would be completely lost without Tatiana's mental map-a trust that was entirely his to give.

Finally, Tatiana stopped at a barely noticeable inset where a wooden door was set back in the wall, so old with rot it was black. The stone doorframe contrasted with the concrete tunnel walls, as if it were cut and pasted from an entirely different era. A train rushed by on their other side, and the tunnel lights dimmed in unison. Tatiana's grin as she turned to Mark was its own glow.

"Ready to see old Archopolis?"

Still trying to catch his breath, Mark nodded. Tatiana pulled two LED head lamps from her pack and handed one to him. "Got your flashlight?" she asked. Mark pulled his clunky dollar-store model from his pocket. With a raised eyebrow, Tatiana resumed, "I guess it'll work in an emergency. Good thing I brought you an extra head lamp. Now stand back."

Tatiana slipped on a pair of work gloves, grabbed the decrepit door's edge, and threw all her weight back. Though it appeared to be boarded shut, the door shuddered against its frame and groaned open. Solid blackness spilled over from the other side. Clicking on their head lamps, the two sliced thinly through the darkness like tiny jellyfish in a deep ocean.

### Chapter Four

IF MARK WAS expecting some ornate extravagance, he would have been disappointed. After walking for several minutes, they had encountered mostly walls of dirt, broken ceiling beams, and random junk metal. Luckily, his vague imaginings of a preserved, antique city did not distract from the real, physical elation of walking in a place that had not been touched, smelled, or remembered by anyone still living. Anyone except Tatiana, of course-and the excitement of being so close that the clove freshness of her hair overwhelmed the dead dustiness was, in itself, more than he could have imagined wanting yesterday.

They walked through several small passageways before the space opened into a cavern large enough that their lights could not reach the opposite side. Patches of marble showed through the mostly dirt floor. Glancing up, Mark's lamp glimmered on violet glass panels in the stone ceiling. Here, Tatiana pulled out the small notebook Mark had seen her use the day before. She showed him a page with an elegantly sketched map, annotated with tiny street names and scattered question marks.

"It took me years to figure out where all these places are on the old city maps. Most of it's just filled in with dirt." She tapped an open spot in the middle of the page. "I'm pretty sure this is the courtyard in front of the old bank. You see the marble in the floor, and over there..." swinging her lamp to the right, "there's still one of those gaudy Greek columns everyone likes to put on rich buildings."

Sure enough, Mark could see the worn but still flowery grooves of a column embedded in the dirt wall. He carefully flipped through a few more pages in her notebook, also filled with careful maps. "Wow. You've put a lot of work into this. Is that what you were doing yesterday, too?"

"It's what I do every day. Well, every day my mom isn't making me do something 'normal,' anyway."

"So, your mom doesn't approve of you being down here?" Mark immediately wanted to bite his cheek for sounding so juvenile. Tatiana just snorted a short laugh.

"She has no idea I go down here. She thinks I'm always at the library studying, or looking up records at city hall. Which I am, sometimes. Her problem is that I study too much, and she wants me to use my time for useful things like straightening my hair and painting hearts on my fingernails or some crap." Her short tirade fizzled away as she noticed Mark's silence. "Um, you didn't tell your mom where you were going, did you?"

Failing to suppress a sigh, Mark answered, "I don't tell her anything, and she wouldn't notice if I was gone anyway." For the moment, Mark was thankful that they could not see each other's faces.

"Oh. I... I'm sorry." Gingerly, Tatiana lifted her book from Mark's hands and flipped through it. Somehow, her vulnerable break in her armor of confidence was more comforting to him than anything she could have said.

Gesturing with the beam of her head lamp, she said, "Um, I want to show you something. This way."

In silence they continued down passages, through the glittered bursts of dust in their lights, broken brick shards rattling away from their feet. Sometimes, they passed a splintered door or window frame; once, a giant store sign with only the letters S and R still brilliantly white against the rust. After many minutes, they reached another cavernous space, even larger than the bank courtyard.

In the center, a cluster of pale stones formed a distinct circle, and large sections of cobblestone still paved most of the ground.

"This is the underground spring. Look." Tatiana leaned her head over the circular stone wall and shone her light into a still pool of water. Edges of the old well flashed with vivid swaths of red and golden algae, her light painting with each movement; but the center of the water drained all light down into a blackness totally unlike the darkness of the old streets. Mark almost felt physically drawn forward, as if the depths were a black hole trying to pull all life and warmth into an unknown existence.

"Is this where the lady was bit by a baby crocodile?" he whispered.

Gold, red, and black flickered in the light as Tatiana nodded. "Yes, this is the spring that was here when they first built the village, and then it became the center of the city." She also whispered. "I've been hoping to see a crocodile here for years."

Cautiously, Mark leaned forward more and tried to see any glimmer of rock or life in the water. The black just continued limitlessly. "How deep does this go?"

"Nobody knows. I found some records of surveyors trying to find a way to the underground source, but this is the only access point they could find. It goes deeper than any of their divers could reach." Tatiana looked up into Mark's face, momentarily forgetting herself and blinding him. "There could be anything living down there, living down there for thousands of years, and no one would know!"

Her eyes, so close, caught every particle of light and amplified it, revealing tiny specks of sapphire, emerald, topaz-the exact opposite of the water's darkness. Their radiance absorbed him so much that he did not at first notice the change in silence. After a few moments, a sustained tone that started as subtly as a ringing in their ears grew louder, until the entire cavern was filled with a solid note. A perfect bell could not have sounded clearer. The two stared at each other, barely breathing; Mark did not even notice when Tatiana grabbed his hand until the cold from her fingers seeped into his palm.

Smoothly, the note changed, rising up by a perfect third. Then more quickly, it slid down half an octave. Varied tones held long, snipped short, moved up and down like chimes, and continuously grew louder. At the same moment, Tatiana and Mark realized together that they were listening to a song. Invisible, something close was singing.

Suddenly, the singing stopped, and in the vacuum left by its absence, they heard a soft breath exhale. Terrified and astounded, Mark and Tatiana turned their heads towards the spring. As one, their lights captured a pair of eyes so intensely white they were pink, floating on the surface of the water. Nearly an arm's length away from the eyes, a pair of nostrils quivered in the air, inhaling. Through the water, they could see a pale shimmer, the skin so clear it was almost invisible. A pink glow of a pulsing heart; thin limbs treading slowly; and a long, long tail curling like a comet into the dark. For a moment, all three were suspended in a shining gaze. Then, with only the smallest ripple, the creature dove back down the spring and was gone.

### Chapter Five

COLD LIGHT from the TV spilled over Aaron's and Mark's outstretched legs. The tired springs of Mark's couch permanently sagged under the olive velour. Mark watched the sickly violet and cyan light flicker across Aaron's shoelaces while his mind drifted far from the show.

"Hey," Aaron snapped Mark to attention, "why're you staring at my shoes?"

Shaking his head, Mark apologized, "Sorry, I guess I just wasn't paying attention."

"You've been really weird lately." Mark only pulled his mouth into a thin line and turned his head away. Aaron continued, "Did something happen with you and that lizard girl?"

Jerking his head back around, Mark shouted, "For the last time, her name is Tatiana!"

With both hands raised in surrender, Aaron quickly cut in, "All right, all right, I'm sorry! Jeez. You know I didn't mean anything by it." He watched closely as Mark slumped down in grudging acceptance and turned back to the TV screen. The car insurance commercial, which they had already seen five times that hour, was suddenly very interesting. "Seriously, though, is there something going on with you two? I've barely seen you this week, and you've been spending a lot of time with the-with Tatiana lately."

"I've just been busy working a lot. You know, someone's gotta push that 'Cook Fries' button."

Ignoring Mark's pitiful attempt to distract him with a joke, Aaron pressed on. "Yeah, right. I saw you with her in the library twice this week. Yesterday, you guys were holding hands under the table!"

"What?" Mark's eyes widened. "I don't...when do you even go to the library?"

"See! I was using the computer right behind you and you didn't even see me! You were too busy staring at each other and whispering. I thought the librarian was going to come over and ask you to move apart."

"So we're friends, ok?" Mark was trying to control his voice, but each sentence was getting louder and higher. "What's wrong with wanting to spend time with a girl, even if you think she's weird?"

"Whoa, slow down, that's not what I'm saying. I don't care if you've got a crush or 'friendship' or whatever." Aaron leaned forward and draped his arms over his knees. "Look, you know I like to give you shit about everything, but I'm being serious here. I'm worried about you. It's just...you have been acting weird lately, and not the happy-fluffy weird of a guy who's getting laid."

The TV droned through the gap in words more awkwardly than any silence. With the slightest shake of his head, Mark just stared at the screen. His mouth twisted around the beginnings of words, but he stopped himself before uttering anything. After several minutes, Aaron flopped back into a slouch and folded his arms. Another full minute passed before Mark spoke, so quietly that his voice was barely audible over the TV.

"Aaron, what-what would you do if something really weird happened to you that you knew no one would believe? That they would think you're crazy?"

"What are you talking about? What kind of weird thing? Something bad?"

"I don't know." Mark paused, recalling the pure echo of the song against stone. "No. Something good. But maybe something bad would happen if you told anyone?"

Aaron threw his head back against the couch, his eyes stretched huge. "Dude, you're confusing me! What do you mean something weird, something good, maybe something bad? Are you-ah!" Grabbing Mark's elbow, he leaned in with a ferocious gaze. Though short and thin, Aaron could project fearsome electricity when he wanted. "Did something happen like with your brother? Did you knock up that Tatiana girl?"

"What? No!" Jostling his arm free of Aaron's grasp, Mark stood up. "As long as you've known me, do you think I'd be that stupid?" Immediately, his throat tightened at the fear of Jacob hearing him, and he dropped his voice. "It's nothing like that."

"Ok, ok, just had to check. Sit down; you're making me nervous now." As Mark slowly sat on the edge of the couch, Aaron continued, "Well, what kind of 'thing' is it like?"

"Never mind. I can't-I promised not to tell. Just don't worry about me. I'm ok, really."

Aaron's brow lowered so far it shadowed his eyes, and his chin quivered almost imperceptibly. "Fine. We've been friends since we were eight, and I've told you every secret I've ever had. Even that thing in the woods. But if you don't want to tell me, then don't. Share it with your new girlfriend instead. You've known her, what, two full weeks now?" Launching himself off the couch, Aaron stomped to the front door and wrenched it open.

"Aaron, wait!" The sentence was cut off by the slam. As an impulse, Mark started to run after him, but forced himself to stop. Once he lost his temper, talking to Aaron was like talking to a rabid badger. Somehow, he would find a way to apologize later.

"What's going on?" Jacob stumbled down the hall. "Why're you slamming stuff?" He glanced for a moment at the empty living room, the TV still blaring. "Wasn't Aaron here?"

With a sigh, Mark waved him back. "It's nothing, just forget it." After Jacob had already turned down the hall, he added, "Sorry". After standing stupidly in the middle of the floor, Mark returned to the couch. Not knowing what else to do, he steadied his eyes at the TV, but all that passed through his brain was an erratic seizure of fluorescent motion and babble.

### Chapter Six

MARK SNORTED AWAKE at the gentle touch on his shoulder. His mother crouched next to him where he had fallen asleep, still sitting on the couch. As the television light flared over the sags and folds in her face, he tried to remember when his mother had started looking so worn.

"Hi, baby," she rasped quietly. "Sorry to wake you, but you looked so uncomfortable."

"Mom, please don't call me 'baby.'" Mike straightened the twinge in his back from slouching. "But I'm glad you woke me. I didn't mean to fall asleep."

"I can call you 'baby' because I'm your mother, and you'll always be my baby." She softened her retort with a comical frown.

Mark rolled his eyes, familiar with the gag. "Yeah, yeah."

His mother frowned earnestly as she sat back and watched him straighten his aching muscles. "Is everything all right, Mark? You haven't fallen asleep on the couch in a long time."

With an annoyed click of his tongue, Mark turned his head away. "Jeez, everyone keeps asking me that! Yes, I'm fine. Everything is fine. I just lost track of time and got tired, that's all."

As she started to respond, a commercial blared in volume over her voice. Grumbling in her throat, his mother grabbed the remote and turned off the TV, throwing them both into a stale dusk lit only by the stained streetlight through the mustard curtains. She pressed on. "I know how hard this divorce has been on you boys, but if something's bothering you, you know you can..."

"Divorce?" Mark interrupted. "You haven't even started the divorce! You and Dad have been separated for two years, and neither of you has even begun to file for divorce yet!" A tiny part of his brain guilted him about waking Jacob, but he couldn't control the rise in his voice.

"Do you have any idea how expensive a divorce is?" His mother recoiled from his tone. "Why do you think I've been working so hard lately? There are filing fees and lawyers, and I can barely afford to keep up with daily expenses on my own! Do you think your father is helping me with your boys' things? And Jacob won't even..." she forcefully stopped herself and took a deep breath. "I'm sorry. I just...I know I haven't been there for you like I should. This has been hard for me, too."

Even in the dim light, Mark could see her hands shaking, and the guilt stabbed a little deeper. No matter how hard either of them tried, they could not seem to hold a conversation that did not end in yelling. Yet, he could not seem to cut away the coils of pain that clung to his throat and forced out words he never wanted to say. "Well, it'll just be one more year before you'll only have one slacking son to take care of. Then I'll be like Dad and finally be out on my own."

Nauseated by shame, anger, and exhaustion, Mark hurried out of the room before he could see the pain swell into his mother's eyes-the same pain that took control of him and whipped knives from his mouth. In the hall, he saw Jacob's light under his door. Perhaps his brother had fallen asleep in his usual haze with the lights on, but more likely he had heard the whole exchange. Even Mark's protective instinct towards his brother could not outweigh his current, confused spirals of anguish. Slamming his bedroom door shut behind him, he crumpled on his bed, letting exhaustion quickly sweep him away.

### Chapter Seven

THE NEXT NIGHT, Mark and Tatiana huddled around an LED lantern that threw harsh light and shadows across the cobblestones. Their heads leaned close, but their attention focused on the edge of the underground spring, which they had ringed with small stick-on lights. Also focused on the spring was a camera and tripod, the camera remote clutched in Tatiana's hand. They listened so intently to the silence that they synchronized their breaths, memorizing each other's whooshes of air. Though concentrating on catching the smallest movement or sound, Mark still found himself thinking-for minutes at a time-about the soft spearmint he could smell on Tatiana's lips, or the faintest rustle of cotton that moved with her breathing. When she cleared her throat suddenly, he was so startled his whole body twitched.

"What if we're just scaring it off with all these lights?" she whispered. "Maybe it wasn't the lights that attracted it last time?"

Smiling, Mark shook his head. "You say that every time. We have to use the lights or else we can't get proof. The camera was your idea."

She nodded, but still frowned in worry. "Yeah, but maybe your idea was better. Maybe we should turn off the lights and just try to record the sound."

"But even then if it shows up, we won't be able to prove what's making the sound. Everyone would just say it was a bell, or..." he trailed off, unable to think of an instrument that could reproduce the song. "Anyway, why do you want to go over this? You were the one who wanted to hold off on telling anyone." With a twinge, Mark recalled the hurt in Aaron's face.

Tatiana blew out an exasperated puff of air. "You don't get it. I'd been waiting almost my whole life to see any sign of one of those, even a toenail, and you show up once and look one in the eyes. What if we scared it off, and that one time will be all I'll ever get?"

Mark wrapped his hand around hers and squeezed gently. "I do get why this is important to you, but we're doing all we can. I'm sure we'll see it again, now that it knows we're here. Those were not eyes that looked scared. We just have to be patient."

Glancing down, Tatiana licked her lips-a habit that Mark noticed she did when thinking carefully. "I-I haven't told you about something that happened when I was little. When my dad took me exploring." She paused and licked her lips again.

Mark waited.

### Chapter Eight

"WHEN I WAS eight, my dad...well, I didn't meet my dad until I was eight. That I remember, anyway. He just showed up one day and...he was trying. To be a dad, I guess. We'd go on walks around the city, and he'd show me all the subway and bus routes, so I'd know how to get around on my own. I'm not sure if he even knew how to drive." Her mouth curled into a half smile. "It drove my mom crazy, worrying about me wandering all around, sometimes in pretty bad neighborhoods. I think my dad just had no idea what to do with a kid, so he took me on his own hobby. We'd explore abandoned buildings, walk through the subway access tunnels and listen to the trains, sneak into supply rooms of restaurants and hotels. You'd be surprised how easy it is if you act like you know where you're going."

"Anyway, one day we were exploring an underground gas line access tunnel, I think under a park or something. I know there were water pipes running through everywhere. It was really quiet-usually you can hear traffic or something, but we couldn't hear anything except the water. Then, the farther we walked, the louder the water got; but the sound was coming up from underneath the tunnel, not through the pipes. It got so loud we had to shout at each other. I started getting really scared, because I imagined this giant wave of water breaking up through the concrete and smashing us. I think I actually believed a monster of water was coming after us."

"I grabbed my dad's hand and tried to pull him back in the direction we came. At first, he just shook me off and said to keep going. I started crying and screaming, 'Let's go, let's go, there's a monster in the water!' Any moment, I felt the ground was going to open up and we'd get swept away. But then my dad laughed, and I was confused. Why would he be laughing when I was so scared? He crouched down to my ear, to make sure I could hear, and said, 'That's not a monster, that's the river, La Fuente. The conquistadores named it The Source, because it's the source of life here. It's so loud because it's keeping the forest and the animals and the whole city alive.'"

"I know it sounds cheesy, but somehow that worked. I wasn't scared anymore-I imagined the water totally differently, almost like it was magical instead. And then, right after he finished saying that, we heard this ringing sound. The same sound that we heard," she pointed to Mark and herself. "It was like it was a part of the water, or like the water was carrying it, because we could hear it totally clearly through the noise. The song traveled right underneath our feet. Probably, it only lasted a few minutes, but it seemed like my dad and I were standing there forever. We just stared at each other for the longest time, and we were grinning and we started laughing. I can't even remember being so happy." For a long pause, Tatiana stared at her hands, twining her fingers distractedly through the sharp lines of shadow.

"Because I was just a kid, I thought it was angels singing. After that, of course, I started learning all the legends and history and realized it must have been something living in the river underground. I've spent ten years trying to find whatever that thing is, trying to hear that song again." Looking up, she peered into Mark's eyes, so close that stray wisps of her curls tickled his forehead. "And suddenly you come along, and I find it again. My next happy moment."

### Chapter Nine

SPEARMINT AND CLOVES DIZZY in his head, Mark could no longer resist the flecks of copper in her eyes, delicate and trusting as the dust of butterfly wings. He leaned across the precarious inches between them and touched his lips to hers: gently, unassuming.

A little gurgle sighed in her throat, and she slowly pressed more firmly, and then drew back. She met his eyes again, smiled, and glanced down with a nervous cough. Mark knew his face was betraying the heat in his heart, but he trembled at noticing that the rich shade of her skin could not hide her flush of blood either. They both sat with their heads bowed a moment, not speaking. Rolling the tip of his tongue, he tasted the spearmint on his lips.

Trying to change the subject, Mark asked, "Um, can I ask what happened to your dad?"

The only change on her face was a slight crinkle in her brow, but somehow Tatiana's entire person drained. "I didn't see him much after that. A couple more times he took me exploring, and then he just stopped showing up. I felt really abandoned, especially since I thought we'd been having so much fun. Every place we went was this mysterious adventure, like the kids' detective novels I used to read. Before that-before he showed up-I didn't really think of him or feel abandoned, 'cause I'd never known him. My life was school, my mom, and her hobbies, which was a lot of going to the mall. Then I abruptly had a dad, and he showed me this whole other way of living and looking at the places around me; and just when I really started to get attached to him, he disappeared. It crushed me." Her voice cracked.

Cautiously, Mark rested his palm on her knee. "It's ok, if you don't want to talk about it." Tatiana shook her head quickly.

"No, I'm ok. Actually, it's nice being able to trust someone else with this. My mom and I don't talk much anymore. You're a pretty good listener."

"Yeah, well, not talking is one of my best skills," he grinned. Tilting her head, she angled a smile up at him. Then she focused her eyes sideways into space, her mind concentrating on some raw, buried place in her mind. When she continued, her voice was a delicate rustle.

"Turns out, I learned years later, the reason my father disappeared again was because he'd gotten arrested and sent to a mental health hospital. What my child self had perceived to be just an exciting sense of fun and kind of a quirky imagination, was actually a symptom of his mania. One day he just had a breakdown, grabbed some random guy walking down the street, and beat him to a pulp. The guy was in the hospital for a week before he died of brain trauma. I don't know exactly what kind of sentence they gave my dad, but he's pretty much going to be in the hospital for the rest of his life." She took a deep breath and slowly released it before continuing. "I've been holding that memory of us in the tunnel, with the singing and the water, for so long. I just can't imagine how the man who was with me, who made me unafraid so easily, could be the same man who would...do something like that. It's stupid, but I felt like if I could just find a connection to that moment again, if I could find the thing that was singing and prove it was real, then maybe it would prove that moment was real. Validation, I suppose." Her shoulders were visibly shaking. "Now I'm so close, and I feel I might lose it all again."

For a stunned moment, Mark scanned his words for something that might sound comforting, but nothing felt right. Ever so gingerly, he reached up and touched her cheekbone, lightly as a whisper. He could feel the warm tears that the shadows hid. Brushing them off, he traced his hand along the side of her face, his pulse nearly bursting through his fingertips.

"We'll find it again, whatever that creature was. And even if we can't prove it to anyone else, at least you'll always know for sure that it was real."

With her eyes closed, Tatiana laid her hand against his and pressed it tighter against her face. She guided his palm to her mouth and kissed it again and again. His skin became wild under the quivering of her breaths; he had to focus on gulping lungfuls of air to calm the trembling of his entire body.

At that very moment, they heard it. A hissing whisper that meandered like mist around the walls.

Both their eyes flew open, and they turned to the spring.

### Chapter Ten

THE CROCODILE CREATURE had pulled its entire head above the edge of the well, its arms gripping the stone with webbed, long-fingered hands that were a cross between crocodile and human hands. Like a cat at night, its eyes mirrored the light with a blazing sheen. Though its great, toothy jaws were not moving, it was making a series of hissing, whistling sounds; as he watched more closely, Mark saw its nostrils fluttering around each airy syllable.

Almost forgetting to breathe himself, Mark finally pulled his senses together enough to whisper, "Is it talking?" As he heard his own sounds blend with the creature's, he realized what little difference lay between their speech.

"I-I think so," Tatiana whispered back, obviously noticing the same thing. "Should we, um, what should we do?"

Before he could respond, a subtle but distinct snap came from the camera as Tatiana overcame her own shock enough to remember the remote in her hand. Instantly, the creature went silent, its albino eyes glinting huge. Every muscle freezing at once, Mark wondered why it had not occurred to him earlier that, speaking or not, this was still a creature with a fang-filled deathtrap that could crush his torso in one bite. How far away would they need to be to outrun it?

As soon as the question entered his mind, the creature lunged entirely out of the water with a thrash of its giant tail. Mark and Tatiana scrambled their feet under them, slipping on the worn cobblestones. Flinging himself backwards, Mark stumbled and slammed his elbow on a rock; an electric jolt of numbness temporarily paralyzed his arm. The creature's force was so great it nearly flew towards them, and Mark knew they could never possibly outrun this thing, even if they had been much farther back. Instinctively, he threw his uninjured arm over his head and waited for the inevitable snapping of his bones. He heard Tatiana shout his name, but his body was too panicked to move.

Instead, he heard a metallic crash and plastic splintering nearby, and looked up to see the camera smash on the ground. The creature stopped, cracked open its jaws, and unleashed a shrill, gurgling screech that drained the blood from Mark's head. Then, with a grace that seemed preposterous for such a large body, it swung around and ran towards the far edge of the courtyard, all four legs swiveling swiftly underneath it like a dog or a cat. Except, instead of moving its pairs of front and back legs together, it moved its side legs together, so that it was both galloping and slithering in a hypnotic S-curve. In the space of a thought, it was beyond the reach of the lights.

"Hurry!" Tatiana ran up to Mark and pulled him to his feet. Grabbing her backpack and throwing it around her shoulders as she went, she ran after the creature, calling back to Mark, "We've gotta catch up!"

His elbow stabbing alive with pain, Mark stumbled after her. "Wait! It's too dangerous!" She ignored him. Her flashlight was a spastic firefly as she bounded ahead in the darkness. Mark pulled on his head lamp and followed, every movement jarring through his arm. Tatiana's light disappeared around the corner of what appeared to be another passageway. The light from his head lamp bounced almost worthlessly across the uneven ground; Mark could only hope he wouldn't slip on a hidden rock or patch of algae. Just before he reached the opening of the passageway, a furious swoosh echoed out, and Tatiana screamed. His heart clamped to a stop.

"Tatiana!" Oblivious now to the burning in his arm, he ran faster. Images of her body crumpled in the unforgiving mouth of that creature nearly blinded him. Now fully in the passageway, he could not see any sign of her or the crocodile ahead in the short span of his lamp. He ran for what must have long enough to catch up, but still there was nothing. Shouting her name over and over, he heard no answer. No sound at all but the hysterical echo of his voice, mocking him.

When his lungs were ready to collapse, and the pain from his elbow had seared up to his brain-when he made one final plunge into the dark, ready to let hopelessness consume him-the ground ripped open, and he fell with a cascade of earth into an endless pit, until his mind succumbed to blackness.

**~ ~ ~ ~**

### Related Books

**How to Beat Procrastination**

Procrastination is the habit of putting off responsibilities until the very last minute. People have different reasons for procrastinating, but the end result is almost entirely the same; work is completed late and of a much lower quality than it would be if completed on time. Some people will claim that they work better under pressure and that procrastination is just part of their genius. This is all well and good if the procrastinator is writing an epic novel or trying to build a ship in a bottle, but when others depend on work being done on time and as requested, it seems unfair to rely on the excuse that genius prevented the work from being done. If it's a boss in a corporate setting who expects work to be done at a certain time and in a certain way, failing to meet expectations could result in professional stagnation, inability to promote, and feelings of "always being looked over" for special assignments. If it's a client in a contract setting, failure to have work completed as requested could result in being unable to collect payment for work done or, worse, losing the client to the competition forever.

Fortunately, like other bad habits, procrastination is a habit that can be broken. It might take a little time and a little patience, but there is no quick fix for habits that have been a part of who we are for who knows how long.

If there's one thing you shouldn't put off, it's reading this guide on improving productivity by eliminating the beast of procrastination from your life. The advice offered is simple to follow and requires minimal effort to implement, even for the the habitual procrastinator.

Get How to Beat Procrastination now from your favorite retailer.

### Free Bonus Sample Included With This Ebook

#### How to Beat Procrastination

First, Still the Mind

One of the main reasons people procrastinate is because they feel like they have too much on their plate, or too many responsibilities to manage at once. Even if the person was able to sit down and get started on one of their tasks, he might feel an inability to focus or concentrate because of the nagging feeling that he is neglecting other responsibilities. This kind of response is often brought on by an overactive brain; a brain that tries too hard to work and worry about several things at once.

Relaxation techniques like meditation and deep breathing have been reported by practitioners to be very successful at helping the brain stay cool, calm, and collected, even in the face of seemingly endless tasks.

A few minutes of meditation may not make the workload seem any lighter, but it can keep the person more motivated to finish their tasks by relieving them of the mental and emotional worries they were experiencing.

The type of meditation or breathing technique used doesn't even matter. Any relaxation technique that helps the person calm down and feel more comfortable with the tasks in front of them is a good relaxation technique. One of the most popular techniques is to sit comfortably in a chair, back straight, palms down on the thighs, feet planted flat on the floor, and eyes closed. From this position, which can be accomplished in any office chair, the person will imagine being in front of the ocean, on a beach, watching the water move in and out from shore. Once they have this image in their mind, they will begin to focus closely on their breaths, evenly spacing and drawing out breaths so that each inhale and exhale is the same length. After focussing on their breathing for even just a couple of minutes, and after spending a few minutes in an imagination vacation, the person will notice that they seem less stressed and probably less "on edge" about their daily tasks.

When a feeling of calm is reached, the person can begin chipping away at their tasks one by one. If at any time the feeling of stress begins to creep back, the person can try repeating this phrase, an ancient proverb, as they work:

"The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."

This means that, no matter how daunting and long a list of chores might be, there is no way to ever accomplish them without first taking them on one by one.

Second, Energize the Body

There are no two ways about it; many procrastinators just feel lazy. They probably can't explain why, but unless a deadline is looming overhead, they would rather rest and relax than get down to work. This kind of attitude can often be attributed to a lack of energy in the person. Sometimes, a cup of coffee or energy drink is enough to get a person through their responsibilities, but these are only short term solutions, and it's just not healthy to rely on sugary drinks to get through work.

To give the body more energy to make it through the day and to face the tasks it has to face, a healthy diet should be incorporated into every person's daily routine. This isn't the same as going on a diet, but a strategy for long term health and energy by introducing healthier foods into every meal.

The best source of long lasting energy are raw fruits and vegetables. Unlike processed foods, which are full of empty calories and artificial preservatives, raw fruits and vegetables provide healthy doses of vitamins and minerals that can energize better than any sugary energy drink. However, many people don't' even get their full daily recommended servings of fruits and vegetables, much less enough to give them all day energy. This might be because they don't like the taste of raw fruits and vegetables or because they like the tastes of other foods too much. So, instead of trying to replace entire meals with buckets of fruits and vegetables, people looking for more energy throughout the day should infuse raw fruits and vegetables into each of their regular meals. For example, eating a bowl of fruit before a bowl of cereal will give the person energy throughout the morning and will even make them feel more full and less likely to reach for a mid-morning snack. At lunch and dinner, salads before meals have the same benefits; they make the person feel full longer and gives them real energy that they'll feel almost immediately.

Juicing is another way to make sure the body gets all of the fruits and vegetables it needs to stay energized. Juicing is a preferred method of getting fruits and vegetables because it's simple and blends flavors of fruits and vegetables together into tolerable and tasty concoctions that are easy to drink.

By eating a bowl of fruit or salad before each meal, and by drinking home made fruit and/or vegetable juices throughout the day, people may soon notice that they have enough energy throughout the day to avoid sugary coffee and energy drinks. Not only will they feel more energized and have more motivation to face the tasks they've been putting off, they'll probably even end up shedding a few pounds in the process.

* * *

**Did you enjoy the free sample of our other story by the same author?**

Go to your favorite retailer to get How to Beat Procrastination now.
