The 13 th tribe

[42]

At the junction of the alley and the tunnel-where he had returned on hands and knees when the gunshots had made his curiosity stronger than his fear-Tyler dropped his face into his hands. He tried to scream, but all he could do was gasp for breath. His stomach retched, and he waited for the vomit to come. But like his scream, it stayed inside. He hitched in breath after breath. He blinked, blinked, opened his eyes, and saw the detailed texture of the stones through his fingers.

His heart clenched tighter. He had crept out from the alley-not realizing it at the time, but pulled by the fascination of an invisible being suddenly taking the form of a gray-scaled Shadow Man-and when the sword had… had… he had dropped his face right then and there. So here he was, exposed in the light of the open door.

He raised his head, turtle slow, sure he’d find Shadow Man standing over him, the sword poised high like a guillotine’s blade. But Shadow Man was still in the room, his back to the door. He was working to get something into a backpack; while his shoulders seesawed up and down, his hips swayed back and forth.

The man touched his ear the way Secret Service agents do in movies and said, “I got it… Yes, Ben, I saw it, all right?” He laughed. “Oh, and I guess they’re having a two-for-one special today, because I got Creed too.” Pause. “Right. Meet you there.” He moved his finger from his ear, hefted the pack, and spoke again: “You’re welcome, buddy.”

The words confused Tyler, but then another assault on his mind pushed everything else away. The thing in the backpack was the shape of a bowling ball, and a dark stain was spreading over the bottom of the pack.

Tyler’s vision focused for a brief moment on the headless body hanging off the edge of the bed, spilling blood into a pool on the floor. He dropped his gaze and saw the severed hand midway between the bed and the door. Its fingers were splayed open, as if it were waiting for someone to hold it.

And rolling toward Tyler like a marble on the flat stones of the walkway was the black thing the now-dead man had offered his killer. It stopped barely an arm’s length away. Instinctively, Tyler reached out and snatched it up. It wasn’t a marble or any type of ball: more like a partial roll of Life Savers. As he pulled back with his prize, Shadow Man’s sharp voice stopped him.

“Hey!”

Tyler raised his head. Shadow Man was bouncing toward him, slinging the backpack over his shoulder, raising the sword.

“Drop it, kid! Now!”

Tyler scrambled to his feet and shot down the alley the way he had come. His reasoning for choosing that path instead of the tunnel home didn’t catch up with him until a few seconds later: The tunnel didn’t bend until it was close to the courtyard at the far end; if Shadow Man threw the sword or used the gun he’d taken, Tyler would have had no chance at all. He was fast on his feet, especially turning, zigzagging, and generally acting rabbit-ish. And he knew the monastery’s crazy layout.

Yeah, good job, he told himself. Keep thinking, don’t be stupid.

Stupid? Like what? Like taking that little black thing? The thing the murderer with the big sword wants?

Stupid, stupid, stupid. Drop it, just drop it.

But his hand wouldn’t obey. His fingers tightened around it. Somebody killed for it. Somebody died for it. He didn’t understand why that mattered, why that meant he shouldn’t let it go, but that’s the way he felt.

He and Dad used to watch a TV show, What Would You Do? or something like that. In one, a woman was hit by a car that just kept going. Some people on the show panicked and froze, others ran to see how the woman was. Dad had said, “Call 911, people! Get the license plate!”

Tyler had understood calling 911, but “Get the license plate”?

“Justice,” Dad had said. “Make the person responsible pay for his actions.” Dad was big on justice.

If you’re not going to drop it, Tyler thought, run faster!

Nothing reached his ears but his own panting and the loud kich-kich-kich of the utility case. If he was going to lose the man chasing him, he had to get rid of the case. He tugged at the buckle, but it didn’t budge. He glanced into blackness behind him and saw Shadow Man flash through a ray of light twenty feet back. Clenching the Life Savers thing in one hand, he used the other to reach into his pocket and fish out his knife, his whittling, prying-cool-things-outof the-dirt, fingernail-cleaning knife. His father had taught him how to open it with one hand, using his thumb to flip the blade out. Without slowing, he opened it and tried to slip it between his pants and belt so he could cut the belt’s canvas. But he missed and jabbed his hip.. twice.

A hand gripped his shoulder, squeezing, tugging him back.

Tyler yelled. How’ d he get so close? Shadow Man’s panting-grumbling was right there, right in his ear; his boots were loud on the stones.

Stupid! Pay attention!

He swung his arm above his head, crossed it over his face, and plunged the knife down into Shadow Man’s wrist.

The man yelled, and his hand slipped away. A string of sharp words reached Tyler’s ears, along with the unmistakable sounds of the man tumbling to the ground.

That’s it! That’s it! Yeah!

He turned to head up the stairs to the rooftops and looked back.

Shadow Man was already rising-gripping at the wall to help himself up. He roared, and Tyler heard all the rage he could not see on the man’s shadow-hidden face. He burned up the steps, crossed a bridge, and started toward a waist-high wall that separated terraces. He stopped. Behind him, Shadow Man raged on as he pounded up the stairs.

Tyler knew what he had to do. He took off in a different direction. He darted to a gap between two living quarters that had been built centuries apart. The alley-if you could call it that-was wedge-shaped, with the far end barely wide enough for him to squeeze through. A square of glass bricks set into the right-hand wall showed that a light had been left on inside the building and illuminated the far end, making it appear wider than he knew it was. Perfect.

He waited at the entrance until the man appeared on the bridge and spotted him. Then he shot into the gap.