Fenzy by Robert Liparulo Read Free Book Online Page B

fall through. When he didn’t—he seemed to simply hover there—Keal lost his patience. He planted his foot on the broken stalagmite, leaped, and grabbed the man’s ankles.

CHAPTER

thirteen

    David and Xander ran around the corner onto a short roadway that rose from the docks and ended at the square. They hit the square and beelined it for the path that would take them to Taksidian’s house. If Xander were right, no one would give them a second thought.
    Stomping right behind Xander, David glanced around and mentally kicked himself. He remembered the other day, when Phemus had attacked them in their house and chased them into the clearing. Everything Xander said their enemy couldn’t do, he did. David had told Xander, “Anything else you think he can’t do, so I have a heads-up about what he’s going to do?”
    It was a lesson his brother apparently hadn’t learned, for now the two of them seemed to be the only things the Atlantians noticed. The brawlers at the center of the square, the vendors, the pedestrians—they were all glaring at them. Several pointed. Others shouted. A few started toward them. David saw the kids who had tried to kill him. They were back in the corral on the opposite side of the square, push-ing and taunting each other into another fight. They heard the shouts, spotted him, and clambered through the fence rails to come after him.
    “Xander!” David yelled.
    “I see them! Keep running!”
    “But—“ David said. More people dropped what they were doing to move in.
    “We can make it to the path before they reach us!” Xander said.
    That means we can’t , David thought, but he didn’t see anywhere else to run. At least they were heading for a portal. He picked up speed, pulled up beside Xander, and passed him. His speed encouraged his brother to push harder, and he stayed with him. At first, all he saw ahead of him was a wall of vines and leaves. As he drew closer, the path’s opening became a vertical band of shadow among the foliage.
    Xander was right: they were going to beat the Atlantians to it. Still, their shouts, combined with the increasingly loud slapping of their feet, sounded to David like a rising, clat-tering movie soundtrack—one that signaled the coming of something terrible. It scared the tar out of him, and he was certain he would trip or miss the path and entangle himself in the vines or simply choke and freeze in place.
    But then he was there, swinging onto the path. He grabbed the gate on his right to stop himself. Xander crashed into him, and was working the latch before David even remembered there was a latch. The gate swung open, and they stumbled through it. Xander slammed it closed.
    David turned to run up the path to the house, but Xander grabbed him. “Give me my belt!” he said. “Hurry!”
    “What?” David said. “Why?” He slipped the belt over his head and handed it over.
    Xander unbuckled it, looped it through the bars of the gate, and tied it in a knot. He made another knot, then a third. David watched his brother’s muscles bulge as he pulled each one tight.
    The first of the Atlantians stomped up to the gate: the two men who had fought in the center of the square. They were big and strong and bloody. They sputtered out sharp words David didn’t understand and thrust their arms through the bars. Xander backed away.
    “Let’s go!” David said.
    “Hold on a sec,” Xander said, leaning over to rest his palms on his knees. He was panting hard.
    The men rattled the gate. They hadn’t spotted the belt yet. A crowd was piling up behind them, wailing—David was sure—for their heads.
    “Xander!” He couldn’t believe it, Xander standing right there, not four feet from a mob trying to get him. He had a feeling his brother loved it. It was his way of telling them Ha! Thought you had me, didn’t you? Ha!
    “Can’t,” Xander said. “Got a stitch in my side.”
    “You’ll have more than that if those guys get through. Come