Out of the corner of my eye, I see Sneak disappear. If things go bad, he’s not going to allow himself to be a target. Good for him, I think to myself.

  “Turn those damn bikes off,” Dad commands. “Don’t you know what those engines can attract?”

  I glance at Radar, who’s standing beside me, as usual. She’s showing no sign so far that she’s picking up any hit of an approaching Anomaly. I’m grateful to see that, but I have no idea how long it will last.

  A tall, gaunt guy who seems to be the leader inches his bike forward. His long, reddish-brown hair hangs way past his shoulders and his tangled beard is filled with gray. A deeply lined, craggy face makes him look like he’s in his sixties or even seventies, but I doubt he’s that old. Life on the outside ages you quickly.

  “Yeah, we know,” he replies. “We call it ‘riding the Black Death.’” He shrugs. “Sometimes you escape the thing, sometimes you ain’t so lucky. We don’t really care. It’s a better way to go than many nowadays.”

  “Well, we do care,” Dad replies. “We don’t want any trouble, so if you don’t mind, we’ll be on our way. You can wait for your next chance to ride the Black Death after we’re gone.”

  “Not so fast,” the biker says. “You might not want any trouble, but what if we don’t feel the same?”

  I can see Dad frown. I’m sure if the situation wasn’t so serious, he might be amused.

  “You’re kidding, right?” he says. “You’re outnumbered and outgunned. Not to mention that you’re facing trained Marines. You guys don’t stand a chance.”

  The biker leader actually grins. “No, we surely don’t,” he replies matter-of-factly. “Except that none of us really gives a shit anymore whether we live or die. I’m bettin’ you can’t say the same. I doubt you’d wanna lose any of your friends, which is exactly what would happen if it came to a fight. We’d take at least a few of you with us before you got us all.”

  I hate to say it, but he’s probably right. Packed as close together as we are, these guys are sure to hit someone, even with the crossbows. We Miracles are probably safe, shielded by the line of Marines in front of us, but you never know. I hope Dad can think of some way to end this mess peacefully.

  “So, what is it you want, then?” he asks.

  “A few of your rifles would be nice,” the guy replies, “and some ammo, to start. Survivin’ out here ain’t exactly easy. We could stand a few more guns.”

  “An’ one of them women,” adds a burly giant sitting on his bike next to the leader. When he speaks, I can see he has only four or five yellow teeth in his mouth. “I ain’t had a woman in way too long. Not since poor ol’ Marci croaked.” His eyes alight on me for a few seconds, and a crawling sensation creeps over my skin.

  Several of his comrades laugh. Marci’s death seems to be a source of some amusement to the gang. I find myself hoping her death—and her life—were not too horrible. Somehow, I doubt that was the case, though. As I look away from the guy’s face, I try to push the thought from my mind.

  Dad’s eyes remain locked on the leader. “You know that’s never going to happen,” he says. His voice has grown hard now. “Best you keep your man in line before he gets himself in trouble.”

  “I dunno,” replies the leader. “Might be fun to have a woman around again.” His gaze shifts to us Miracles. “You got four of ‘em,” he continues. “Surely you can spare one. No need to be selfish about it.”

  Suddenly, all hell breaks loose.

  Out of nowhere, the leader’s head suddenly topples from his neck in a gory spray of blood, as if it’s somehow been severed by an invisible blade. A split second later, an arrow buries itself in the center of the burly guy’s face. He crumbles to the ground, dead before he could possibly know what hit him.

  For a moment, nobody moves as everyone tries to comprehend what’s just occurred. The arrow registers in my mind as Kai’s—he must have been watching the confrontation from somewhere behind us and took the leader’s beheading as a sign to attack. I’m not surprised he reacted faster than any of the rest of us. I still have no idea what caused the decapitation, though.

  Trained warriors, the Marine’s shake off their shock quicker than the bikers and let loose a deafening fusillade of automatic rifle fire. The bikers don’t stand a chance. Their bodies jerk and dance as the bullets tear into them. Before even one can get off a shot, they’re all lying dead in the street, their corpses tangled up with one another and with their still idling motorcycles.

  I almost feel sorry for them, until I remember the human skulls adorning some of the handlebars. The world is a better place without this gang, I know.

  My ears are still ringing when Sneak materializes on the ground in front of the dead bikers. Clutched in his right hand is his sword. The blade is crimson with blood. His mouth is stretched into a broad grin as he pushes himself up to his feet.

  The source of the beheading is no longer a mystery.

  “Good thing you thought to duck,” Lights calls to him.

  “Yeah,” Sneak replies as he wipes the blood off his sword on the dead leader’s jeans. “I figured no one would be shooting at these guys’ feet.”

  Drawn by the sound of the gunfire, the advance guard has raced back to rejoin us. They look around in wonder at the slaughter, but there’s nothing for them to do. Dad orders the nearest Marines to switch the engines of the bikes off. Even though we’ll be leaving momentarily, there’s no sense taking a chance one might trigger an Anomaly and let creatures into our world who might follow us. While the men are busy doing that, Dad crosses over to Sneak.

  “Just what were you thinking, Sneak?” he asks in a stern tone.

  Sneak looks a little surprised, as if he were expecting a compliment rather than a rebuke. I’ve seen Dad a whole lot angrier, so I know Sneak isn’t in much trouble. I’m not sure Sneak knows that, though. He looks down at his feet sheepishly for a moment before meeting my dad’s eyes.

  “I, ummm…” he begins, clearly unsure about his reply. “I, uh, didn’t think these guys were going to give up without a fight, Sir.” As he speaks, he seems to be gaining confidence. “I saw a chance to give us an advantage. I knew your men would react faster than these jerks would.”

  Dad’s face and voice soften just a bit. “You could have been killed,” he says.

  Sneak is smiling now, confident he’s not in much trouble. “Nah,” he says. “Your guys are all great shots. I knew I’d be safe down on the ground.”

  Dad shakes his head resignedly. Sneak has been in and out of trouble his whole life.

  “Well, I have to admit, you certainly brought matters to a head,” Dad says. “Pun intended.”

  A bunch of us chuckle at Dad’s quip. Sneak did indeed bring matters to a head, for sure.

  LEESA

  CHAPTER 8

  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 course he didn’t, Leesa realized. She hadn’t really expected an answer to her shouted questions. She allowed herself a few seconds of comfort snuggled against his warm, muscular chest before she pushed herself away. This time, she surveyed their strange surroundings more carefully.

  Nothing around them looked at all familiar. Somehow, she and Rave had been transported to a place she had never seen, a place she had never imagined.

  They stood on a wide, mostly barren plain. The dark brown dirt beneath their feet was hard and dry, rutted with zigzagging cracks and shallow crevices. Clumps of stringy yellowish-green weeds that appeared half dead dotted the uneven ground, and a few short, twisted trees poked up at widely scattered intervals across the landscape. The nearest one looked like no tree Leesa had ever seen, not even in picture books. Its limbs were thin and gnarled, covered with wicked looking thorns and tiny, dark green needle-like leaves.

  In two directions, the horizon seemed to stretch away limitlessly, merging with the strange, hazy brownish-gray sky far off in the distance. The haze was different from any Leesa had ever seen—it seemed heavier, more opaque. She could make out the dull glow of the sun floating high in the sky behind it, but just barely. Many miles off to their left, the ongoing eruptions of several jagged volcanic peaks painted the sky a dark, glowing orange hue. Leesa watched the distant eruptions for a few seconds, wondering if they might be the source of the heavy haze that choked the sky, then she continued her survey. Up ahead, much closer than the mountains, she could see the dark edge of what looked to be woods, though from this distance, she couldn’t really be sure. She couldn’t be sure of anything in this god-forsaken place.

  “Where on earth are we?” she asked, again not really expecting an answer.

  “Nowhere I’ve ever been,” Rave replied, as mystified by their whereabouts as Leesa was. He had a sinking feeling that they might be somewhere other than on earth—at least the earth they knew—but he didn’t voice his concern. He saw no need to add that particular notion to Leesa’s worries just yet, at least until he was more certain.

  Leesa stood silently, replaying in her mind everything that had just occurred and trying to make some sense of it. They had been watching a cloud of green magical energy flowing out from Ralin’s mouth, wondering what kind of effect it might produce, if any. She remembered an exceptionally loud clap of thunder and a burst of lightning, followed immediately by a blinding green flash. The next thing she knew, she and Rave were here—wherever here was. The whole thing was impossible—but that’s not what her eyes were telling her.

  “We were waiting to see what Ralin’s magic might do…” she said, more to herself than to Rave. She looked up into his face. “And somehow we ended up here. I don’t understand any of this.”

  “When the thunder sounded, Ralin’s magic exploded outward, engulfing us,” Rave said. “I don’t know how, but it must have sent us here.”

  Leesa shook her head in disbelief. “That’s not possible. Wizards can’t teleport like this. There’s nothing in our magic than can do anything of this sort. I’ve asked Dominic about it—teleporting would be such a cool power—and he said no.”

  Rave shrugged. “And yet, here we are.” He paused, and then added, “Maybe Ralin was right after all.”

  Leesa’s brow furrowed. She wasn’t following him.

  “Right about what?”

  “About the thunder. He said it was magic, remember? He insisted that it was.”

  Leesa remembered. Ralin HAD been quite insistent. She had just chalked it up to his youthful imagination, but what if it was more than that? Was it possible? Could the thunder have been related to magic in some way? But even if it had, how could Ralin possibly have known that? None of this made any sense.

  “What kind of magic could it have been?” she asked. “What magic possesses that kind of power, to whisk us away like this?”

  “None that I know of,” Rave replied.

  They both remained silent for a few moments.

  “Perhaps the fell power that sleeps beneath our volkaane settlement had something to do with it,” Rave suggested. “Dominic said it dwarfed any magical power he had ever come across.”

  Leesa thought about that for a moment. It was just one more thing that didn’t make sense. What would have awakened that slumbering power after all these centuries? And if it had awakened for some reason, why would it have combined with Ralin’s magic like this? That the fell power had been involved just didn’t feel right to her. Unfortunately, she could think of no other alternative.

  “I guess it doesn’t really matter how or why it happened,” she said. “What matters is that we have to find a way back to Ralin.” She shuddered as a sudden, horrifying thought struck her. “What if this magic also sent Ralin somewhere? What if he’s all alone, in some strange, terrifying place? He’s just a child.” She began to sob.

  Rave drew her into his arms again. “It’s all right,” he comforted, tenderly stroking her hair with his fingers. “The last thing I saw before everything vanished was that Ralin’s magic had only wrapped itself around you and me. Ralin and Dominic were untouched by it. I’m sure they’re still back where we left them, together. Dominic will take care of Ralin until we figure out a way to get back to them. If he needs any help, he can enlist your mother.”

  A long sigh escaped Leesa’s throat. There was nothing they could do about any of that while they were stuck here.

  “I hope you’re right,” she said.

  CHAPTER 9

  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 more magic could somehow separate them, and they set out in the chosen direction. An hour of hiking cut the distance to the woods in half. It also allowed the smudge of sun to move far enough in the sky for Leesa to determine they were heading west. She had no idea whether that was good or bad, but she felt some tiny comfort in being able to put a name to the direction, at least.

  The hard, dry ground changed little over the miles. Most of the walking was easy, though Leesa had to be careful not to trip over the edges of the wider cracks and shallow crevices that continued to mar the parched surface. Rave’s light hunter’s tread made such caution instinctual for him, but Leesa had to consciously think about where she placed her feet. Even so, it was far from an unpleasant hike. Were it not for the direness of their situation, she almost could have enjoyed it.

  So far, they had seen little sign of life other than the weeds and the widely scattered, thorny trees. A few insects buzzed around their heads now and then, but there were no spiders, no snakes, and none of the small mammals Leesa thought might have lived in burrows beneath the ground. This land was inhospitable, for sure, but Leesa was surprised at the total lack of living creatures. Even the hottest deserts were home to some living things, and as bad as this place was, it seemed less harsh than some of the deserts Leesa had seen in movies and on television.

  Before she could wonder about it any further, an explosion of dirt erupted right in front of her. A thick, dark green serpent flashed up at her face through the spray of soil. Leesa barely had time to register the gaping round maw filled with circular rows of jagged yellow teeth about to rip into her. The attack was so sudden and unexpected that she had no time to react, no time to employ her magic in her defense. She was helpless to stop the assault.

  While Leesa’s human reflexes were too slow to save her, the same was not true for Rave. Before the serpent could strike, Rave leapt forward with supernatural volkaane quickness and wrapped his powerful hands around the creature just behind its hideous head. Tongues of blazing blue fire crackled from his fingers, engulfing the serpent’s head and racing down its scaly body in sparkling blue waves. The monster twisted and writhed in agony, but Rave held fast as the magical flames consumed it. In a matter of moments, the thing was dead, and Rave tossed the smoking carcass aside. It landed with a soft thud and quickly dissolved into a pile of black and gray ash.

  Leesa wasted no time now. Before the creature had even turned to ash, she quickly wrapped herself and Rave in a thick air shield, casting the magical barrier under their feet as well in case there were more of the serpents lurking beneath the ground.

  She acted just in time.

  Clods of dirt began exploding upward all around them, one after the other, like bombs exploding under the soil. Soon, dozens of the serpents were banging their hungry mouths against the invisible shield. Leesa’s years of practice paid off now. Even the savage onslaught of a pack of these powerful monsters failed to break her shield.

  Leesa could hardly believe how many of the giant snake-like creatures had joined the attack. She wondered if perhaps she and Rave had stumbled upon a nest of them—it was the only explanation she could think of for their numbers. As she watched the fearsome serpents continue to smash their heads against her shield, trying vainly to get at Rave and her, she was certain of one thing: this was no place on the earth that she knew.

  Rave moved closer against her. “I’m sure glad I married a wizard,” he said, smiling. “They can’t get past your air shield.”

  Leesa leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “I wouldn’t have had time to cast a shield if you hadn’t saved me from that first one,” she said. “Thank you.”