Paladin Prophecy 2: Alliance by Mark Frost Read Free Book Online

disappointed at the question. “Yours,” he whispered.
    “Good to know,” said Will.
    He glanced back at the others, trying to hide his surprise at how unexpectedly easy this had seemed so far. Ajay gestured, urging him to keep pressing their case.
    “Raymond,” said Will. “We have a lot more questions, about Hobbes and the Knights and the Prophecy, and unless you tell us everything, we’ll have to go to the headmaster and the police and anybody else who’ll listen—”
    “And that would be the last mistake you ever make,” he said, all the fight gone from his voice.
    Will held his eyes, softening his tone to sympathy. “Then I guess you’re just going to have to help us.”
    Nepsted turned away and grew restless, rocking from side to side in his chair like a trapped and wounded animal. He made small snorting and clicking noises and random parts of his body bulged alarmingly out of his skin.
    “Uh-oh,” said Nick from the corner of his mouth. “Squid alert.”
    Thin tendrils of pale flesh threaded out from Nepsted’s sleeves and collar, lashing around anxiously, grabbing at equipment on the shelves behind him and objects on the counter in front of him and yanking them to the ground.
    “Dear gussie,” said Ajay, taking a big step back. “We should have brought a tranquilizer gun.”
    “Raymond,” said Will firmly, banging his hands on the cage. “Raymond, look at me. Look at me right now. ”
    Nepsted looked up and met his eyes, looking lost, frightened, and hopeless. Will focused and gently pushed a thought picture at him—an image of a lake, clouds, and blue sky—trying to calm him down. Within moments, Nepsted stopped rocking, tendrils retracted, and his body settled back into a solid mass.
    “Tell me what we can do,” said Will, lowering his voice. “You helped Nick last year and that goes a long way toward helping us believe you’re on our side. If that’s true, we need to help each other.”
    Nepsted didn’t respond, frozen with fear. Nick then walked past Will to the cage and put his hands up to show he meant no harm.
    “You’re a prisoner in here, aren’t you, Raymond?” asked Nick with surprising sympathy.
    Nepsted seemed to shrink down even farther into his chair. All the defiance was now gone from his eyes. He nodded.
    “You saved my life here, man,” said Nick simply. “You tell us how we can help you, any way at all, and we’ll do it.”
    Tears rolled out of Nepsted’s eyes. He made no move to hide them or wipe them away, and this time he didn’t look away. Tendrils thrust out of his right hand, snaked out of the cage, and wrapped around Nick’s hand. Nick held on to them, even though Will could see it was creeping him out.
    “I need the key,” said Nepsted in a tiny voice.
    “Which key?” asked Will. “The key to what?”
    The thin white tendrils crept down and grabbed the massive lock on the outside of the door, holding it up so they could see it.
    A long-hasped, heavy-duty security model, to be sure, but far from indestructible.
    Acting on instinct, Will took out the special dark glasses Dave had given him when they first met that allowed him to see creatures and objects from the Never-Was. During the winter, Ajay had cut the original lenses down and refitted them into black metal frames the size of small, retro-nerd granny glasses, then used the glass that was left over to make two identical pairs that Will gave to his friends.
    Taking their cue from Will, Nick and Ajay put on their dark glasses as well, and all three of them leaned down for a closer look at the lock on Nepsted’s equipment cage.
    Which now appeared to be like no lock any of them had ever seen, as big as a man’s fist, with shifting, multilayered plates of impregnable steel wrapped around a central column that looked like it was fashioned from a solid cylindrical diamond, with no visible keyhole or combination wheel. The whole thing pulsated with some kind of faintly green toxic