The Merchant of Death (3 page)

“This is from Bobby,” she said softly.

Bobby? Bobby Pendragon? Mark had no idea what was happening, but the last thing he expected was to hear that this strange woman who appeared in his bedroom in the middle of the night had something to do with his best friend.

“Who are you? How do you know Bobby?”

She gently picked up Mark's right hand and slipped the ring onto his finger. It fit perfectly. Mark looked at the strange ring, then back at the woman.

“Why? What's this?” he asked.

The woman touched a gentle finger to Mark's lips to quiet him. Mark immediately felt his eyes grow heavy. A second before he had been about as wide awake as anyone can be, but now he felt weary enough to fall asleep on the spot. He felt the world slipping away. In an instant, he was out.

The next morning Mark woke up at the usual 6:15 with the alarm clock blaring. His first thought was that he hated alarm clocks. His second thought was that he had had the strangest dream. He chuckled to himself, thinking he should cut down on the raw vegetables before bedtime. He then reached over to hit the snooze button . . . and saw it.

There, on his finger was the ring the woman had given him. Mark sat up in bed quickly and stared at it with its gray stone and strange inscriptions. It was real. He could feel it. It had weight. It wasn't a dream. What was going on?

He dressed quickly and left the house without telling his parents what had happened. There was only one person who could explain this to him. Bobby Pendragon. But something had already
happened with Bobby that gave him a queasy feeling. Last night was the county semifinal basketball game . . . and Bobby hadn't shown up. His parents were there, his sister was there, but not Bobby. After the first half he went over to ask the Pendragons where Bobby was, but they had already left. Very strange.

And Stony Brook lost. Bad. Everybody at the game was buzzing, wanting to know what happened to their star. Nobody knew. When Mark got home he called Bobby's house, but there was no answer. He figured he'd see him in school the next day and get the story. Then he went to sleep and had his strange night visitor. Now Mark wanted to know a lot more from Bobby than why he hadn't shown for a basketball game.

When Mark got into the school building, the number one topic of conversation was The Game.

“Hey Dimond? Where's your superstar pal?”

“He blew it!”

“This better be good, Dimond!”

“What's the story?”

Everyone was yelling at him about Bobby. That could only mean one thing. Bobby hadn't gotten there yet. Of course, Mark didn't have any answers, so he shrugged and kept walking. He went to Bobby's locker, but Bobby wasn't there. Instead there were more angry kids waiting to ambush him.

“He chickened out, didn't he?”

“Couldn't take the heat!”

Mark dodged them and went to Bobby's homeroom. Bobby wasn't there, either. Where was he? Something was definitely wrong.

And then it happened. It started as a twitch at first, but quickly grew. It was the ring. It was moving. It felt like it was squeezing and releasing, squeezing and releasing.

“Dimond! Hey, Dimond! Where is he?” More kids were closing
in. This was not a good time. Mark didn't know what to do, so he grabbed the ring with his other hand and ran. He blasted through kids, bumping into more than he dodged. A couple of older guys pushed him back, nearly sending him sprawling, but Mark somehow stayed on his feet. The bell rang and everyone headed for homeroom, but Mark didn't stop until he reached his own personal Fortress of Solitude—the boys' bathroom on the third floor.

He ran to the center of the room and held his hand out as if it didn't belong to him. The ring was still moving, squeezing and releasing like a heartbeat. Then the gray stone started to sparkle. An instant before it had been a solid gray mass; now it sprang to life like a brilliant diamond. Beams of light shot from the ring and filled the room.

Mark couldn't take it anymore. He yanked off the strange ring and threw it. It hit the tiled wall and bounced to a stop in the center of the bathroom. The beams of light continued to shoot from the stone and dance across the ceiling and the walls, making the room look as if it were alive with beautiful, dazzling stars.

Then Mark watched in awe as the circular band started to grow larger. It slowly got bigger and bigger until it was about the size of a Frisbee, and in the center of the now impossibly large band was a black hole where the floor should have been. The ring had opened up a dark portal to . . . somewhere. From deep within this portal, Mark could hear the faint sound of musical notes. It wasn't a melody; it was a jumble of sweet sounding tones that grew louder and louder.

Mark backed away from the strange ring, not sure if he should turn and run or stay and watch the show. He was fascinated and terrified at the same time. The musical notes coming from the portal got so loud that Mark had to cover his ears. Whatever was happening, he didn't want any part of it anymore. So he turned and ran for the door. He was just about to throw it open when . . .

Everything stopped. The musical notes ended so abruptly it was like somebody threw a switch to cut the power. The dazzling light show ended also. The only thing that didn't stop was Mark's pounding heart. Whatever had just happened, it was over now and Mark tried to calm down. He took his hand away from the door and looked back into the bathroom. What he saw was the ring on the floor, right where he had thrown it. It was back to its normal size and the stone had returned to its original solid gray color.

But something else was there too. Lying on the floor next to the ring was a scroll of paper. It was yellow parchment that had been tightly rolled and tied with a thin leather strap. Whatever the event had been with the ring, the result was that it had deposited this scroll here on the bathroom floor.

Mark approached the scroll cautiously, bent down, and picked it up with a sweaty hand. It was indeed rolled paper. Nothing scary about it. Just odd. Mark tugged on the leather cord that kept it together and gently unrolled the paper. There were four sheets, all filled with writing. Mark looked at the first line of the first page, and what he read hit him like an electric charge. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't think. This strange parchment was a letter. . . to him.

It began:
I hope you're reading this, Mark.

T
here wasn't much I could ask Uncle Press from the back of a speeding motorcycle. Between the whine of the engine, the blast of wind rushing by and the fact that both of us were wearing these high-tech helmets, conversation was impossible. So I was left with my own imagination to try and figure out where we were going and why.

One thing was clear though. We were leaving town. I lived in a quiet, peaceful, okay
dull
suburb of New York City. I'd been into the city a few times with my parents, mostly to go to events like the holiday spectacular at Radio City or the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Then there was that one time you and I, Mark, hopped the commuter train to catch that James Bond flick. Remember? Other than that, the city was pretty much a mystery to me.

On the other hand, it didn't take a New York cabbie to realize Uncle Press was steering us into a section of the city that by anybody's standards would be defined as . . . bad. This was not the New York I'd ever seen, except maybe on a TV news report about some nasty crime that had just gone down. Once we shot off the Cross Bronx Expressway we were smack
in the middle of the badlands. Burned-out buildings were everywhere. Nobody walked on the streets. It all looked empty and desolate, yet I had the eerie feeling that many sets of eyes were locked on us from the dark windows of the derelict buildings as we cruised by. And of course, it was nighttime dark.

Was I scared? Well, judging by the fact that I wanted to puke and I held on to Uncle Press so hard I expected to hear one of his ribs crack, I'd say yeah, I was scared. Uncle Press guided the motorcycle toward one of those old-fashioned kiosks that marked the stairs leading down to the subway. We bounced up onto the curb and he killed the engine. As we glided to a stop, suddenly everything became quiet. Granted, I'd been riding on the back of a motorcycle for the past half hour and after that
anything
would seem quiet. But this was
really
quiet, like a ghost town. Or a ghost city.

“This is it,” he announced and jumped off the bike. I jumped off too and gratefully removed my helmet. Finally, I could hear again. Uncle Press left his helmet on the bike and headed for the subway entrance.

“Whoa, hold on, we're going to leave the bike and the helmets?” I asked with surprise. I couldn't believe it. He didn't even take the keys out of the ignition. I'm no expert on crime, but I could pretty much predict that if we left this gear here, it would be gone before we blinked.

“We don't need it anymore,” he said quickly and started down the subway stairs.

“Why are we taking the subway?” I asked. “Why don't we just stay on the bike?”

“Because we can't take the bike where we're going,” he answered with a matter-of-fact tone. He turned and headed down a few more steps.

I didn't move. I wanted answers, and I wasn't taking
another step until I got some. Uncle Press sensed that I wasn't following him, so he stopped and looked back at me.

“What?” he asked, with a little bit of frustration.

“I just blew off the most important game of my life, my team is going to crucify me tomorrow, and you want me to follow you into the subway in the worst part of New York City? I think I deserve to know what's going on!” This had gone far enough and if I didn't get some answers, I was walking. Of course I wasn't exactly sure of where I would go if Uncle Press left me there and went on alone. I figured it was a safe risk, though. After all, he was my uncle.

Uncle Press softened. For a moment I saw the face of the guy I'd known all my life. “You're right, Bobby. I've asked you to do a lot on faith. But if we stop for me to explain everything, we may be too late.”

“Too late for what?”

“There's a group of people who are in trouble. They're relying on me to help them, and I'm relying on you to help me.”

I was flattered and freaked at the same time. “Really? What kind of trouble?”

“That's what would take me forever to explain. I'd rather show you.”

I didn't know what to do. Even if I wanted to run away, I had no clue of how to get out of there. And here was this guy, my uncle, staring me straight in the eye and saying he needed me. There weren't a whole lot of options. I finally decided to divulge the single overriding thought in my head.

“I'm scared.” There, I said it.

“I know. But please believe me, Bobby, as long as it's in my power, I won't let anything happen to you.” He said this with such sincerity, it actually made me feel better . . . for about a second.

“What happens when it's
not
in your power?” I asked.

Uncle Press smiled, and said, “That won't be for a while. Are you with me?”

They say that just before you're about to meet your doom, your life flashes before your eyes. Surprisingly, that didn't happen. I didn't think of the game. I didn't think of my family. I didn't even think of Courtney Chetwynde. I just thought about me and Uncle Press. Here and now. I took that as a good sign. So I mustered all the bravura I could and said, “Hey, ho, let's go.”

Uncle Press let out a laugh like I hadn't heard from him in a long time, then turned and rushed down the stairs. As I watched him disappear into the dark hole of the subway, I did my best to pretend I wasn't being an idiot by going along with him. When I got to the bottom of the stairs, I saw Uncle Press standing in front of a wall of graffiti-covered plywood that blocked the entrance. The station was closed and by the looks of the old wood, it had been closed for a long time.

“Well, that's a problem,” I said glibly. “No go, right?”

Uncle Press turned to me and with the sincerity of a sage teacher imparting golden words of wisdom, he said, “There are no problems, only challenges.”

“Well, if the challenge is to catch a subway at a station that's closed,” I countered, “then I'd say that's a problem.”

But not for Uncle Press. He casually reached toward the wall with one hand, grabbed one of the boards and gave it a yank. It didn't seem as if he pulled all that hard, but instantly four huge boards pulled loose in one piece, opening up an avenue into the darkened station.

“Who said anything about catching a subway?” he said with a sly smile.

He effortlessly dropped the large section of boards on the
stairs and stepped inside. I had no idea Uncle Press was that strong. I also had no idea why we were stepping into a closed subway station, at night, in the worst section of the city.

Uncle Press then poked his head back out. “Coming?”

I was half a breath away from turning, running up the stairs, and giving myself a crash course in motorcycle driving. But I didn't. Chances are the bike was already stolen anyway. I had no choice, so I followed him.

The station had been closed for a long time. The only light came from street lamps that filtered down through grates in the sidewalk. The soft glow cast a crisscross pattern against the walls that threw the rest of the station into darkness. It took a while for my eyes to adjust, but when they did I saw a forgotten piece of history. At one time this was probably a busy station. I could make out ornate mosaic tile work on the walls that must have been beautiful when new, but was now a mess of grimy cracks that looked like a giant, dirty spiderweb. Garbage was everywhere, benches were overturned, and the glass around the token booth was shattered. In a word, it was sad.