The Iron Warrior
Page 19

“It’s all right, Ethan.” As always, Guro was far calmer than anyone I’d ever seen. “I have always known, from the very beginning, that you were different. From the moment I saw you in my class, I knew that your destiny would be unlike any I have seen before. I understand, and I want you to know I don’t blame you for anything.” A lump caught in my throat, as Guro smiled faintly and nodded toward the abandoned house. “Now go,” he ordered. “Do what you have to do. We will see each other again, and you can tell me everything.”
I glanced at Kenzie and backed away, toward the fence. “I’ll come back,” I said, my voice thick. “When this is all over, I promise I’ll come back.” Guro didn’t answer, and I turned away, walking to the padlocked gate with Kenzie and Razor. I felt him watching us as we slipped through the fence, felt his dark eyes on me all the way across the yard, up the rotten steps and into the shadows of the house.
Inside, the room smelled of dust, mold and rotten wood. Razor buzzed and stood up on Kenzie’s shoulders, flashing his glowing smile along the walls to pierce the darkness. No movement, no creepy fey or boogeymen lurking in the shadows as far as I could see. This place was rumored to be haunted, but I knew that was because a pair of bogeys used to live here, feeding off fear and suspicion. That was before Keirran, Kenzie and I had come through on our way to the Nevernever only to find a group of Forgotten waiting for us, having scared away the current residents.
“I don’t see any bogeys.” Kenzie gazed around. “Maybe they never came back after the Forgotten chased them off.”
“Maybe. Let’s hope the trod still works,” I muttered, picking my way across the shaky floor. She followed, lighting the way with Razor. Carefully, we eased across the room, climbed the creaky, groaning staircase and ducked into the kid’s bedroom on the upper floor. Walking to the closet, I grabbed the knob and pulled open the door.
It jerked out of my hand, slamming shut with a bang, making me jump. Razor yelped, making the light dance wildly, and I scowled. “What the hell?”
“Go away!” rasped a harsh voice from the other side of the door. “My closet! Mine!”
“Well,” Kenzie said, sounding amused, “looks like the bogeys are back.”
“Yeah.” I frowned, then tried opening the door again. It didn’t budge, and I pounded on the wood with my fist. “Move!” I bellowed through the wood. “We need to use the trod. Get out of the way.”
“My closet!” the voice screeched back. “Not yours! Mine! You go away.”
“Dammit, I am not in the mood for games! If you’re not out of there in five seconds, I’m coming through this door with steel.”
“Ethan,” Kenzie said, and shrugged off her pack, “hang on.”
Pulling out a bear-shaped golden bottle, she set the honey on a bookshelf and turned back to the closet. “You know the drill,” she said, pulling her backpack over her shoulders once more. “One bottle of honey. That’s what we can trade for using the trod. You have five seconds to make a decision. Four. Three. Two...”
No answer from the other side. Kenzie waited a moment longer, than nodded at me. Carefully, I reached out, grabbed the knob and pulled.
There was no resistance this time. The door swung back without a creak, and a cold breeze fluttered in from the thick, gray forest through the frame.
I smiled, shaking my head. “All right,” I said, glancing at the girl beside me. “I can take a hint. I’m going to let you and Razor lead this excursion from now on. Just call if you need something stabbed.”
* * *
Razor took the lead when we crossed into the wyldwood, sometimes leaping through the branches ahead of us, sometimes scurrying along the ground like a huge spider. In the eternal gloom of the wyldwood, the gremlin made a bright yet difficult to follow guide. His huge eyes and neon teeth were clearly visible in the murk, but he was easily distracted by every small thing that moved through the branches or undergrowth. He also left a faint but definite trail of corruption behind him—withered grass, dying leaves, yellowed vegetation—as Iron fey still had an adverse effect on the rest of the Nevernever. Thankfully, Razor was small enough for the damage to be minimal, though this worked against us, too. Once, something large moved through the trees ahead of us, causing the gremlin to flee back to Kenzie and not budge from her shoulder for several minutes.
So we hadn’t traveled very far into the Nevernever when night began to fall, making me nervous as the shadows lengthened around us. Though I wanted to keep moving, I knew we probably shouldn’t press our luck. Traveling through the wyldwood in the dark was never a good idea; the things that stalked the woods at night were things you generally wanted to avoid.
“We should stop soon,” I told Kenzie, who was watching Razor scamper along an overhead branch, green eyes bobbing in the darkness. “The wyldwood gets pretty dangerous at night. We should find a place to hole up until morning. Unless we’re really close to the trod.”
“Well, Razor says we are, but I’m not entirely sure about his definition of close,” Kenzie replied. “Anyway, I think stopping soon is a good idea. I’ll see if he can find us somewhere safe.”
A few minutes later, when the wyldwood was almost at full dark, we trailed the gremlin to a stand of massive trees so huge, a ring of six people wouldn’t be able to fit their arms around the trunks. They soared overhead until they were lost to the canopy and the darkness, so high I couldn’t see the tops of the branches. Luminescent blue moss hung in curtains from the trunks and lower branches, fluttering in the wind like glowing lace curtains.
I crossed my arms, looking at Kenzie. “Here? How is this considered a safe place to stop? We’ll be right out in the open. Unless your gremlin thinks we’re going to climb the trees.”
Razor wrinkled his nose at me, then buzzed quietly in Kenzie’s ear. She nodded, then stepped forward and pushed back the moss like a pair of drapes, revealing a large, dry, hollowed-out space in the enormous trunk.
“Okay.” I nodded, as Razor shot me a look of triumph. “That’ll work.”
The strange moss bathed the inside of the trunk with an eerie glow, as Kenzie knelt and unzipped her backpack. The night was warm, and the trunk blocked the wind, so it wasn’t cold enough for a fire. Which was good, because I didn’t think open flames in a large wooden room was the best idea.
“Here,” Kenzie said, handing me a power bar and a bottled water. “That’s dinner for tonight, sorry. I only have a couple each. There was lot of stuff to pack, so I had to make some sacrifices for space.”
“No complaints here.” I settled against the wall and tore open the wrapper. “That magic bag of yours has already saved our hides a couple times now. At this point, I keep expecting you to pull out a car or something.”
She chuckled. “I’m gonna have to stock up on salt, it seems. I had no idea it would be so effective. I wonder if there’s a way to make salt grenades.” She took a sip of water and leaned close, her slender arm brushing mine. Razor crawled up the wall until he found a small ledge jutting from the trunk, and perched there like a tiny gargoyle. “Do you think Guro is all right?” Kenzie asked after a moment.