Empty.
How could that be?
“Jake!” Brandon yelled, and pointed.
Jake tore his gaze away from the mystery of the driverless car. Flames flickered from under the hood.
Jake backpedaled across the room and yelled to Brandon. “Run!”
Together, they sprinted toward the smashed window. Outside, a small crowd had gathered. Sirens sounded in the distance.
“Get back!” Jake hollered as he and Brandon leaped like frightened gazelles through the demolished storefront.
And not a moment too soon.
A muffled blast exploded behind them. An invisible hand shoved Jake from behind and flung him into the arms of the waiting crowd. Heat followed as he rolled and stared back into the dojang hall. It was like looking into the mouth of a furnace. Flames filled the back of the training hall. Smoke churned like a living creature within the blaze.
For a moment—dazed, ears ringing—Jake watched the smoke twist into the towering shape of a shadowy figure. Eyes opened within that smoke, dancing with black flames, and fixed their fiery gaze upon him.
Stunned, Jake flashed back to three months ago. Again he was back in the prehistoric world of Calypsos huddled in the doorway to the great Temple of Kukulkan as the Skull King stalked toward him, armored in shadows, with blazing eyes. Kalverum Rex was a rogue alchemist who dabbled in blood magic, twisting natural creatures into monstrous creations. His goal was to rule all of Pangaea and bend every inhabitant to his will. Jake had stopped him once before, challenging him and staring him full in the face.
Jake gazed into those same eyes now. As he did so, the world darkened at the edges until all he saw were those fiery eyes. They burned through him, down to his bones, making it impossible to move. He fought against it, feeling himself slipping away—
Then a horn blared, deafeningly loud. The smoky creature shattered away as the horn dissolved into the blare of a fire engine’s siren. The world snapped back into focus. Jake turned as the lumbering red truck pulled to the curb.
Chaos followed.
Someone examined him, ran hands over his body, dragged him away, and planted him on a park bench down the street. Besides a little singed hair (which smelled awful), he was unscathed. He’d not even cut his bare feet on any broken glass. A heavy blanket was dropped over his shoulders. The same was done to Brandon.
All the while, Jake kept his focus on the burning school. Arcs of water sprayed into the heart of the inferno. He kept watch for the return of the fiery demon.
He nudged Brandon next to him. “You didn’t see … inside the school … a monster with fiery eyes.…”
Brandon shook his head a bit too quickly and eyed Jake as if he were a few fries short of a Happy Meal.
After a few breaths, Jake realized his friend was right. Dazed and shocked, his stunned mind must have blurred the real world with his nightmares of Pangaea.
Off to the side, a policeman was interviewing a witness, a burly man who held the leash of something that looked like a cross between a rat and a dust mop.
“—then the car comes rolling down the hill, gaining speed.” The man pointed to the steep grade of Hollyhock Lane and pantomimed the sedan’s trajectory with his whole arm. “It plowed straight past me and across the intersection, then crashed through the window. Darn lucky no one was killed.”
It wasn’t luck, Jake thought. If I’d been a second slower …
The policeman jotted in his notepad. “And no one was behind the wheel?”
“Not that I could see,” the witness said.
The policeman scowled and shook his head. “Someone must have left his car running on that hill and forgot to set the parking brake. And you’re sure you didn’t see anyone suspicious hanging around. Or someone take off running.”
“Sorry. I wasn’t really looking in that direction. I was watching the crash.”
The policeman sighed in exasperation, and Jake felt like doing the same. So it was just an accident.
Jake stood up and shed the blanket.
“What are you doing?” Brandon asked. “They told us to stay until our parents got here—” His friend’s words choked off as he realized what he’d said.
Brandon stammered an apology, but Jake waved away his friend’s concern. If Jake had to wait for his parents, it would be a very long wait.
He stared toward the commotion down the street: emergency lights flared, sirens squawked, and firefighters shouted. But he saw and heard none of it. Instead he pictured his mother and father. His last memory of them was forever locked in a photo. They’d been posing at an archaeological dig in Central America, wearing goofy smiles, dressed in khaki safari outfits, holding aloft a carved Mayan glyph stone. They’d vanished a week after the photo was taken.
That had been three years ago. They were never seen again. Investigators assumed bandits had killed his parents—but Jake knew that wasn’t true. He knew there was more to their story, and it continued in Pangaea.
Three months ago, Jake and his sister, Kady, had been accidentally transported to that savage, prehistoric land. They’d made friends, survived a war, and, in the end, discovered a cryptic clue to the true fate of their parents.
In his mind’s eye, Jake returned to the prehistoric valley of Calypsos and walked again into the great Temple of Kukulkan, past its crystal heart, and down to the inner vault that held a vast Mayan calendar wheel made of gold. He pictured again discovering his father’s pocket watch abandoned in the gears of those mighty wheels. He had memorized the words his mother had inscribed on the back.
To my beloved Richard,
A bit of gold to mark our tenth revolution
around the sun together.
With all the love under the stars,
Penelope
It had been an anniversary gift. But as many times as Jake walked that path in his head, he still found no answers. What did the watch mean? Were his mother and father still alive? Were they lost in time?
Jake didn’t know.
All he knew was that he had to find out the truth.
Even now, standing barefoot in the street in his martial arts uniform, his fingers tightened into a fist of determination. He no longer had the patience to wait here. His mountain bike was parked a block away. Right now, all he wanted to do was get back home.
As Jake turned to tell his friend he was leaving, a gangly man burst from the crowd, fell upon Brandon, and scooped him into a bear hug.
“Son, are you okay?”
Whatever response Brandon had was buried in his father’s chest. Jake could see the clear resemblance in the pair: the dark eyes, the black hair. Sometimes Jake held up that last photo of his parents and compared it to his reflection in the bathroom mirror. He had his father’s height and sandy hair but his mother’s blue eyes and small nose. Staring into the mirror offered him a bit of comfort, a way to bring them both closer in a small way.