Van Bender and the Burning Emblems (The Van Bender Archives #1) (25 page)

I stepped toward Nick, ignoring the commotion coming toward me, filling the room—the nearly-frozen rappers to my left, and the horde of angry people now halfway across the room.

Nick’s face darkened with concentration. Still coming toward me, he reached into his pockets and pulled out a tube of yellow brink and a metal cube like the one he’d given me, about an inch square.

He threw the cube on the floor in front of him. It glinted, bounced a few times, and stopped about twenty feet from me. He squeezed some brink into his palm, and as he passed by the cube slowed enough for him to squat and draw a six-inch-high rainbow over the cube. Spinning, he produced a lighter and flicked a flame at the arc. It lit.

As he finished his spin, he stood back up and came toward me, face intense. He didn’t look angry or upset—just focused. Behind him, a white zip-door blossomed from the square and arc, stretching eight-feet high and four-feet wide.

He came toward me at full-speed, squeezing more brink into his hand.

I braced myself to grab him and toss him toward the zigzag trap to my right. I wished that I’d taken judo classes. Or wrestling. Heck, I wished I’d taken any kind of class that might give me a clue as how to physically overpower someone.

Behind me, a swirling emblem floated in the air before Marti. Her face twisted in concentration as she added what looked like flower petals to the top.

Nick was ten feet away.

“Give me the multiplier!” he said.

“In your dreams!” I said.

Stepping forward, I braced myself to try and throw or push him to my right.

He stopped dead in his tracks and gave me a hard look. “What are you doing, son? We had a deal?”

“Turns out I’m not so great at deals. Just ask my mom.”

“Richie, this is a mistake. The Solar Flare—we don’t have time for this.”

His hands moved with unexpected dexterity, drawing a square inside a circle, with a horizontal line extending perpendicular through the center. He drew the emblem in half a second, and lit it. He burst forward again, coming straight at me with one hand extended ahead of him, drawing the tail longer and longer. The square and circle burned, and where his hand passed, the flame followed, headed right for my stomach.

I lunged at him. He stutter-stepped to the side, but couldn’t avoid me completely. I managed to wrap one arm around his waist, but my other hand just grabbed his jacket. He stumbled, but shoved me back, prying my arm away from him. I fell to my knees, and he raced toward Marti.

Compared to him, she seemed slow and inept with brink. That, or her swirly emblem was just that much harder to draw.

He reached her, trailing fire through the air, touching it to her emblem as he ducked under it and spun. She tried to move, to react. As the flame from his burning emblem ignited hers, she smothered the shape, seemingly by accident.

I stood and started toward them as he straightened behind her, trailing the flame around her head, like a halo. A second halo followed.

She cried out. “Stop, Richie!”

I halted.

“Hand over the multiplier,” Nick said.

He stood behind her, as if he held a gun to her head. For all I knew, the halos around her could have a worse effect than a gun. It seemed so, for her eyes gaped wide and her body trembled—though she clearly tried not to move.

Nick glowered. The trail of fire wound its way from him to the circle and square behind me. It still burned, and the smell filled my head.

“Don’t give it to him,” Marti said.

To my side, the rappers continued to inch through my barrier toward me, their faces livid. I sensed the mob passing through the grid of boxing rings. Their shouts and footfalls echoed from the ceiling.

“We had a deal, son. This doesn’t have to break it. I understand that people have lied about me. You’re up against that. But you need to give me the multiplier now, or there’s no hope of defeating the Solar Flare.”

“Let her go,” I said.

“Don’t give it to him.” Tears had started to stream down her face. “I’d rather die.”

“Give me the multiplier.”

I didn’t have a choice—even though Marti had told me she would rather die. Her life wasn’t worth him not having the multiplier.

Or was it?

Was more at stake than I knew? Was Nick dangerous enough that Marti would really rather die than give him the multiplier? Plus, everyone in the room would see that I’d given him the multiplier. They would think I’d been in league with him—they already thought that—and without us having trapped Nick, I could not offer any evidence to the contrary. And besides, maybe they would rather see Marti die than Nick get the multiplier.

“I’ve only got a second left before I have to go back through that zip-door, son. Give me the multiplier.”

I took the multiplier out of my pocket. Yoda looked up at me with wise eyes. “Make this choice, you must,” he seemed to say.

“No, Richie! It’s not worth it!”

I didn’t care if I looked like Nick’s accomplice. I didn’t care that in just a moment I would have to deal with the mob. I had to save Marti. That was the most important thing.

I turned and tossed the Pez dispenser toward the portal. It bounced on the floor and came to rest just before the shimmering doorway.

“No!” Marti shouted. “Idiot!’

Perhaps fifty feet past the doorway, the mob came along the wall, inside my barrier, shouting, fists clenched around brink.

“Good choice,” Nick said.

He closed his hand, and the burning ceased. The trail of fire all the way back behind me extinguished, turned to ashes. He shoved Marti to the side and bolted away from her. I lunged at him, but he dodged aside and pushed me down. My face hit the floor, hard.

Nick ducked low as he snatched Yoda up, and turned to me.

“Don’t worry, son. Despite your treachery, our deal is still on.”

His words only made things look worse, made it look like I really wanted to help him.

“That makes me feel so much better,” I said. “What are you going to do, now?”

That crazy glint that I’d seen earlier that night shone in his eyes. He smiled crookedly. “I’m going to blow up your emotion, and make some brink.”

He nodded once, still smiling, and dove into the zip-door.

With a flash and pop, the doorway disappeared, and I lay on the floor, ash drifting down onto me, holding myself up with my hands, looking at the mob of about fifty people coming at me.

The Impermeable Barrier spell ended. The rappers surged forward.

“Crappy crap,” I said. “This stinks.”

Marti pulled me to my feet, and we fled. The entire world chased.

Chapter 45: Dad blows my mind

Leave it to Richie to force me into doing what I’d been avoiding for fifteen years.

-David Van Bender

Our flight led us past the boxing rings toward the center of the warehouse. People came at us from all sides. In a last-ditch effort to escape, we jumped up into the ring, through the ropes, and headed for the other side, hoping to get down before anyone could surround us.

But dozens of angry entertainers surrounded us. They poured into the ring’s platform, forming a circle around us, watching us like they expected us to break out in dance. But we stood back-to-back, facing the crowd, and turning in a slow circle.

If only I’d done as my parents had wanted, and just stayed out of this mess. Why hadn’t I listened to them?

I probably never thought that in my entire life. And I probably never would, again. You can’t think when you’re dead.

I suppose Mom would have said, “Better late than never.”

“What will they do to us?” I said to Marti.

“The Council will decide.”

“Is ‘skinning us alive’ one of the options?”

She shrugged. I felt it against my back.

“I wouldn’t put it past them,” she said.

The crowd continued to scream and shake their fists. Every now and then, one of them would feint toward us, only to stop and move back into the crowd. Louise pushed her way to the front, her face livid, her Renaissance costume as ridiculous as ever.

“Traitors!” Spittle sprayed from her mouth. But she didn’t come forward. She stayed half-a-dozen feet back. “You’ve destroyed us all.”

“Tell me,” I said to Marti, “just how bad is what we did? On a one-to-ten scale.”

She grunted. “Nick used to be on the Council, until he stole some artifacts and powerful vials of brink.”

My stomach turned over. “So, you might say they hate him a little?”

“A little.”

I don’t know if a grim reaper comes for you when you die. I suspect he doesn’t. But right then, in those moments as the mob slowly closed in around us, and Louise rained spit down on us as she berated us, it sure felt like a big, tall, hooded dude with a scythe had honed in on me.

“Don’t get me wrong,” I said, “but I’m a little curious about why haven’t they started tearing us limb from limb.”

“I don’t get it, either,” Marti said.

As if in answer, the mob below the ring split. Well, it kind of split. A few people stepped out of the way, but it wasn’t like a king had arrived and all the people knelt and fell silent out of respect. In fact, the Council of Bamboozlers had to push their way through most of the crowd, toward us.

They reached the ring, climbed the stairs, and pushed their way through the ropes and people.

Billy Blake, in his turtleneck, Wanda Lovejoy, with her plastic skin, and Mr. Makeup, with a mohawk of spikes and his bored gaze that still didn’t ever meet anyone else’s. They stepped inside the circle, up next to Louise.

“Step down, Louise,” Billy Blake said.

“These
children
betrayed us!” she said, stabbing a manicured fingernail at us.

“We already know what they’ve done,” Mr. Makeup said. “We’re ready to levy judgment on them.”

Marti turned and stood by my side. I felt more nervous without her watching my back, like the crowd behind might sneak up on me and render a gigantic wedgie. Or worse, depants me.

“It’s not like that,” Marti said. “We didn’t mean to.”

The fundamentalist woman who’d tackled me in the Archive stood on the edge of the platform, outside of the ropes, holding on to them as if afraid she would fall backward into the crowd.

“I saw them, myself,” she said. “They broke into the Archive, and conspired with Nick Savage to steal the multiplier.”

“And they gave it to him,” Louise said. She pointed back across the room, to where we’d met Nick. “Not two minutes ago, over in that corner of the room. Punish them!”

The crowd roared its assent. Marti tried to speak over them, to defend us. I joined in.

Billy Blake raised his hands for silence.

The talking died down. I spoke before Billy Blake could.

“We were trying to trap him, so we could turn him in.”

“Lies!” Louise said.

“Louise!” Wanda Lovejoy said.

“Stand down!” Mr. Makeup said.

“We’ll handle this,” Billy Blake said.

She glared at them, as if looking at a pile of enormous poop. She probably thought she should be on the Council of Bamboozlers. In fact, she probably thought she should be the president of the freaking universe.

But with a haughty frown, she nodded, and retreated into the front of the crowd.

Billy Blake turned to us. “The evidence seems irrefutable.”

“We wanted to trap him,” Marti said. “I set up trap spells where I thought he would teleport in.”

The crowed murmured in discontent.

“And he attacked us,” I said. “He threatened Marti with a circle and square emblem, and a double halo around her head.”

I didn’t know if the spell would mean anything to them, but I didn’t know what else to say. Marti must not have, either, for she looked at me and kept quiet. I imagine it was the first time in her life she did that.

The Council regarded us coolly—except for Mr. Makeup. He looked everywhere but at other people. The crowd’s noise had subsided, but hatred still flowed off them like heat rolling off a fire.

“The fact remains,” Billy Blake finally said, “that you didn’t trap him.”

“Rather,” Mr. Makeup said, “you broke into the Archive and gave up one of our most valuable artifacts.”

Wanda Lovejoy added, “To one of our most hated enemies.”

“And it’s something I will handle!”

The man’s voice came from out beyond the ring and past the mob. It sounded familiar, but I couldn’t see past the crowd to the source. Gasps filtered through the crowd.

“Oh, not him!” Wanda Lovejoy said, rolling her eyes.

Mr. Makeup actually growled. “Anyone but him!”

Billy Blake turned so pale I thought he might start to glow.

“Let me through!” the man said.

I knew that voice, but couldn’t place it because of the indistinctness.

The crowd parted.

There, standing not thirty feet away, was Dad.

Wearing a purple cape and a golden crown. Like some kind of king, or something.

Chapter 46: Return of the king

You should have seen the look on his face. I’ve never seen his mouth drop open so far.

-David Van Bender

Despite my inexcusable guilt in the eyes of the crowd and my fear of imminent death, I actually laughed. I simply didn’t know what else to do. It was Dad, the museum curator and former rock star, all dressed up like some kind of king.

Marti smacked my arm with the back her hand. “Shut up!”

I stopped laughing and looked at her. “What the freak is going on?”

She leaned so close I could feel her breath on my nose. “Just shut up, and maybe he can save us.”

Dad started down the corridor of people, his face solemn. He didn’t look at me or Marti, but focused on the Bamboozlers.

“I’ll handle this,” he said.

“No,” Wanda Lovejoy said, “you will not.”

Mr. Makeup kept his eyes down. “You can’t just waltz in here and take over. Not after years of absence.”

“Actually,” Dad said, “I can. That was the deal.”

He climbed the stairs to the ring. Someone held the ropes apart for him. He stooped between them, stepped inside, and came inside the circle to the Council. His golden crown glittered with diamonds along the edge. White fur edged the cape. Beneath it, he wore denim and an un-tucked white button shirt, but he also wore one of those jackets that only covered half of his torso, and had the vials of brink dangling from the arms.