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Chapter 393
We haven't even made it across the road when the silence is broken by the last sound any of us could have expected to hear—the roar of throbbing motors.
I have no idea what kind of engines are making the clamor, but it’s far louder and more powerful than the noise generated by the boat we just rode on across the bay. And it’s getting louder by the second.
“Motorcycles!” Sergeant Moss shouts. “Coming this way.”
None of us Miracles has ever seen a working motorcycle, but the sergeant is certainly old enough to recognize the sound. I wouldn’t doubt that he rode one in his younger years, either. He seems like that kind of guy. I catch myself holding my breath, wondering whether the riders are human—or something else.
Dad recognizes the sound as well. “Get out of the road!” he orders. “Now!”
We race across the street. There’s no time to get any farther than the sidewalk
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The unexpected explosion of green light had momentarily blinded Leesa. When her vision returned it was as if she were looking through a thick film of green plastic, the afterimage of the flash of Ralin’s magic, she knew. Closing her eyes, she massaged her eyelids softly with her fingers. She felt Rave’s hands gently grasp her by the shoulders.“Are you all right?” he asked, his voice heavy with concern.Leesa nodded. “I think so.”When she opened her eyes again, she could not believe what she saw—and more importantly, what she didn’t see.She whipped her head around frantically, desperately searching the unfamiliar landscape. What had happened to their backyard? Where was Ralin? And Dominic? What was going on here?“Where’s Ralin?” she shouted. “What’s happening?”Rave’s voice was calmer than he felt as he drew Leesa against his chest. There was no point in adding to her anxiety.“I don’t know,” he admitted. “Some kind of magic, apparently. I don’t know any more than you do.”Of cours
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Leesa and Rave gazed out over the stark, forbidding landscape. This was not a place anyone would visit willingly, that was for sure.“We’ve got two choices, I guess,” Leesa said finally. “We can stay right here and hope that the magic somehow undoes itself and we end up back home, or we can start looking for whomever or whatever might have had a part in this and get them to undo it.”“I vote we start searching,” Rave responded. He looked around them once more. “You’re the wizard—pick a direction.”With the pale sun almost directly overhead, there was no way to label any direction. Leesa spun around in a slow circle, surveying their options. There was nothing as far as the eye could see in two directions, and she had no real desire to head any closer to the volcanoes. That left only the woods, if that’s what the dark outline in the distance was. She raised her arm and pointed toward it.“That way,” she said.“Works for me,” Rave agreed.She took Rave’s hand, not wanting to chance that
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As Leesa and Rave pushed onward across the barren plain, they encountered no more serpents, saw no creatures of any kind. Nonetheless, Leesa kept the invisible shield wrapped around them, protecting them from any more strange and unexpected dangers this place might suddenly throw at them.Another hour of hiking brought them close enough to see that the dark line they had viewed from a distance was indeed the edge of a large wooded area—more of a forest, actually. The trees bore no resemblance at all to the grotesque, stunted trees that dotted the plain, nor did they look at all like any trees Leesa had ever seen.They weren’t all that tall—perhaps thirty-five or forty feet at most—but they were astonishingly lush and beautiful, covered with bright, emerald green leaves edged in a golden hue so bright it almost glowed. The leaves grew so close together they formed curved, mushroom-like caps that blanketed the top half of every tree. So thick was
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The surviving wyvwern had now disappeared from view, leaving Leesa and Rave alone at the edge of the forest once more. The attack was already beginning to feel unreal, but the lifeless carcass of the creature stretched out on the ground just a few feet away provided grim evidence that it had been very real indeed.“The sooner we figure out a way to get out of this place and back to where we belong, the happier I’ll be,” Leesa said.“I’ll second that,” Rave agreed.Leesa stared at the virtual wall of plant growth beside them. She didn’t know why, but she had a feeling that the answers they sought lay somewhere inside this forest. She still didn’t see any way she and Rave could enter, however. She was growing more and more tempted to try to blast her way in, but she held herself back. She would save that drastic step as a last resort.“I guess we may as well keep walking and hope we find a path into this
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We leave the scene of the motorcycle gang massacre quickly, in case the sound has drawn unwanted attention.As we hurry up the hill on the side road at a rapid march, Kai maneuvers himself alongside me. I hold back a smile—it’s always nice to have him close by. His scouting duties don’t allow this to happen nearly enough for my liking. I almost long for those few days when I had him all to myself, before the others caught up with us back on the California coast. Not that I’m not thrilled to be reunited with my dad and my friends, of course.“Are you okay?” he asks.“Yeah, I’m fine,” I say. “Those guys never even got off a shot.”Kai doesn’t say anything—he’s not the most talkative guy I’ve ever known, for sure. I like being reminded that he cares, though. I struggle to come up with something to keep the conversation going.“You reacted awfully fast back there,” I say. “Before any of the Marines.”Kai shrugs. “I was ready. It was pretty clear there was going to be trouble, so I had an
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I catch his eye and we exchange smiles, but have no chance to talk before he’s off again.We follow along behind him, but he’s moving at a fast jog and is soon lost to sight around a curve in the road. Once again, I find myself marveling at his physical conditioning. He doesn’t seem to ever get tired even though he’s traveling much faster than the rest of us, and by coming back and forth, he’s covering a whole lot more distance besides. None of the Marines show any signs of fatigue, either. As for me, I’m glad we seem to have left the steepest slopes behind us, though I’m certainly not going to sound like a wimp or a whiner by voicing that thought aloud. I bet my friends feel the same way. We’re all in good shape by now, but we’re for sure not Marines.With the heavy gray cloud cover looming over us, darkness begins to descend early. December twenty-first is already the shortest day of the year, and we’re far
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Our wait for the portal to appear is a short one.“Anomaly!” Radar shouts less than fifteen minutes after we arrived at the edge of the forest. She points to a spot about halfway up the hillside. “Up there.”There’s no sign of any portal yet, but Radar is never wrong. We’re all ready to hurry up the slope, but my dad stops us.“Not yet,” he says. “We stay here in the trees where it’s safe until we see it begin to open.”Dad’s being smart and cautious to the end. Radar’s warnings sometimes come as much as ten minutes before an Anomaly actually occurs. There’s no need to expose ourselves just yet.The wait now seems interminably long, but in reality it’s probably only three minutes or so before the air begins to shimmer right where Radar pointed.“Okay,” Dad says. “Let’s go.”We hurry up the ridge, being careful not to get too close to where the Anomaly is forming. All the Marines hold their weapons at the ready—there’s no guarantee this is the portal we’ve been waiting for. It’s possib
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