The Blood Guard (The Blood Guard series) by Carter Roy Read Free Book Online

in case you slipped the noose of that group at the station,” Dawkins said. “This key fob means they brought toys.”
    While we’d been in the dining car, the terrain had changed again. Gone were the leafy green suburbs. Instead, I saw low, flat plains covered with dark scrub. A busy highway ran parallel to the tracks, with all the usual junky buildings that pop up around highway s — g as stations and fast-food joints and big black parking lots. Reminded me of a road trip I’d taken with my parents back when I was nine, before my dad’s job changed, before his work had swallowed him up.
    Thinking of my dad made me wonder about Greta’s family and her interrupted text message. “Where are your parents, anyway?” I asked.
    “They got divorced last year,” she said. “Now my dad lives in DC. I’m going to visit him for a long weekend.”
    I heard myself saying “That sucks,” because sometimes that’s all you can say.
    “You know what sucks even more?” Greta asked. “Being taken hostage by a kid from my old homeroom and his smelly pickpocket friend.”
    “He’s not my friend!” I insisted.
    “I’m right here , you two,” Dawkins said loudly. “I can hear you.”
    That was when I became hyperaware of the quiet: No one in the car was saying anything. The passengers were silent, cowering as far away as possible, parents clutching their children, everyone desperate not to be noticed b y—
    By us.
    Then I realized why: Not only was Dawkins covered with gobs of cheese and splats of ketchup and mustard, but he was still holding that big sword. A sword that flickered with a faint light all its own. And to top it off, he was smiling that loopy grin of his. We must have looked like a parade of lunatics.
    A bleep trilled out from somewhere up ahead: a luggage rack with two expensive-looking black case s — a leather satchel about the size of a backpack, and a larger duffel bag. “These will be ours,” Dawkins said, heaving the duffel at me.
    I caught i t — j ust barely. It was heavy and clanked like it was full of scrap metal.
    “You can’t just take their luggage,” Greta protested.
    “Oh, yes I can. They tried to stick us with those swords. The least they can do is give us whatever it is they brought with them.” Grabbing the satchel, Dawkins gestured toward the back of the train. “Move along.”
    In the next car, we came face-to-face with the mustachioed conductor. The man raised his hands in surrender.
    “I’m very sorry, sir,” Dawkins said, the sword pointed directly at the conductor’s heart, “but I’ll be needing your keys.” Without a word, the man unclipped a big key ring from his belt and handed them over. “Many thanks,” Dawkins said. “Now we’ll just get out of your hair.”
    I glimpsed my backpack in the overhead rack as we passed, but there was nothing in there I needed, only my school stuff, so I left it where it was.
    We went through one more car full of people. Outside, the landscape was barely crawling by; another few minutes and the train would be at a complete stop.
    At the car’s end, Dawkins unlocked a windowless door and ushered us inside. The baggage car was packed floor to ceiling with cages full of boxes and trunks. A narrow aisle led straight between them to a windowed door at the back of the train.
    Greta and I peered out through the dirty glass, watching the tracks unspool behind the train like two long strands of silver ribbon.
    “The end of the line,” Greta said. She rearranged some pins in her fire-red hair. “I’ve thought it over, and there is no way I’m getting off this train with you two.” She stared at Dawkins. “Are you going to stab me to get through this door? I don’t think so.”
    “That is not the door we’ll be leaving by,” said Dawkins. He wrenched a big lever back, and part of the wall slid out and aside like the door on a minivan. Now we were standing along the edge of a wide empty space, being buffeted by the wind. The