Page 39 of Phoenix Chosen 2

“No,” he replies in a low voice. “I feel it, too.”

Oh, God. I don’t like hearing that. I just want it to be all in my head.

I slowly turn around the corner for the next floor and stare down into the dim stairwell. Kalistratos comes up beside me, takes my hand, and we finish our descent to the first floor. The exit door opens out to an uncovered alleyway, and I deploy the auto-open umbrella with a click of the handle button. I turn to Kalistratos, expecting an amazed reaction from him, but he just shrugs.

“We haveskiadeionin Circeana,” he says.

“We just call them umbrellas.”

“Oom…brell…ahh.I’ll stick with ‘skiadeion.’”

A small river flows down the center of the alley, carrying sludge and litter from the nearby dumpsters to the street. The sky flashes, and I count the seconds until the thunder rolls over us. The storm is getting worse.

I feel it before I see it. That roller coaster dip in the pit of my stomach, and the chill that goes through my body. Next to me, Kalistratos tenses into a ready stance. I reach protectively for the figurine pendant and clutch it against my chest. The rain splashes into a wide pothole, scattering the reflections of the buildings around it. Then it goes dark. It’s as if the light has been sucked into its depths, like a pit of pure shadow.

“Aw, great,” I say. “Not again.”

The shadow monster emerges from the hole—and then I realize it’s not alone. Two more of the creatures rise and crawl out of the dark spaces around the alleyway.

Kalistratos doesn’t hesitate. He thrusts out his hand and a white flame erupts from his palm, filling the alley with light for a brief moment. The monsters recoil and cower, but quickly recover when the flame fizzles away beneath the pouring rain. He reaches out and grabs my hand and, with a burst of power, stops time. The raindrops slow to a stop around us, a curtain of sparkling diamonds. But the monsters aren’t affected. They surge forward, tunneling through the wall of water straight for us.

“Alright, run,” Kalistratos says.

The rain slams down around us again. I toss the umbrella at the monsters and we spin around and bolt for the far end of the alleyway. Kalistratos keeps a small phoenix flame burning around his hand, illuminating the space around us. The monsters writhe and glide after us, moving along the ground like fast and giant slugs. The glow of brake lights from the street traffic shines ahead of us like a beacon of hope—hope that we can somehow evade the monsters out in the open where there’smore light. But then, two of them disappear, diving away into the shadows, and a curtain of blackness falls across the end of the alleyway, blocking our path. They’ve combined and are pouring out from the crisscross of overhanging electric wires like viscous tar. Behind us, the remaining creature approaches, reforming into a shape that almost looks like a man. It walks towards us on blobby, unstable legs.

Kalistratos grabs me and pulls me against him, holding his free hand high to shed as much light as possible. The creatures close in on us, slowly and with some hesitation, but their fear of the fire is not as strong as it was before. The cold rain slams down on us. The shadows creep forward, bodies like black holes pulling in all light, and Kalistratos’s flame wavers. I can feel them reaching out, reaching for Kalistratos, reaching for the figurine around my neck. They want to take them both from me and I’m powerless to stop them.

I can’t let them take them.

Suddenly, there’s a blinding flash of light from behind us. It fills the alleyway and washes over us with a brilliant warmth. The shadows react, twisting and shaking violently before each bursting into a dozen fragments that flee like cockroaches into whatever dark cracks and crevices they can find.

We turn around and shield our eyes. Part of me expects to see a police cruiser blasting us with their spotlight, but this isn’t just your run-of-the-mill electric light. I can feel it—this is like Kalistratos’s flame. This is magic.

It fades, and my eyes adjust to the silhouette of a person holding an umbrella standing at the end of the alley.

15

TYLER

“Tyler and Kalistratos?” they call.

“Who wants to know?” Kalistratos shouts back.

He comes toward us. From his height and the sound of his voice, I expect him to be younger, but he seems to be about my age. He has silver hair and is wearing a crisp white blazer and white shorts. Even the umbrella is white. It looks like some kind of private school uniform, or something. He bows slightly, looking very unconcerned about the shadow monsters he just frightened away.

“Hewould like to meet you,” the man says.

“Who?” I ask.

He holds the umbrella out to us. “Come. You should hurry. Your questions will be answered.”

“Won’t you get wet?”

But the man has already produced another umbrella from somewhere. He opens it up and starts back in the directionhe came from, pausing only to silently beckon us to follow. Kalistratos and I look at each other, then go after him.

He walks just ahead of us, deflecting any questions with a repeated and patient “Your questions will be answered soon.”

“It would be nice to have our questions answered right now,” Kalistratos says. “How do we know we’re not walking into some trap set by whoever sent those monsters?”

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