The Paladin Prophecy by Mark Frost Read Free Book Online Page A

the email—
    The screen went dead.
    “Dad. Oh my God. Oh my God.” Please don’t hurt him, please don’t hurt him, please let him be okay .
    Too stunned to move, Will gazed at the poster on his wall. THE IMPORTANCE OF AN ORDERLY MIND.
    Listen. No matter what’s happened, you have to do exactly what he’s telling you. The way he taught you: rationally, systematically, ferociously. Now .
    Start by asking the right questions: When did this happen?
    Tuesday, November 7, 8:17 a.m. While I was in history class. Dad sent his last real texts before I got to school: RUN, WILL. DON’T STOP. Every text after 8:17 was either coerced or sent by the men I saw in Dad’s hotel room. They’re working with the ones who’ve chased me all day. The ones who’ve done something to my mother .
    But why? What do they want from us?
    Out of the corner of his eye, Will saw movement in the back window. He grabbed a rock paperweight from his desk, a birthday gift engraved with a single word: VERITAS. He whirled and pegged it at the window. It punched a hole through the glass and clipped something that spun and fluttered to the roof.
    Will hurried to the window. Lying on the shingles outside, in a sharp rectangle of light, was the little white-breasted blackbird. It twitched once or twice, then lay still. The sight of the small pathetic creature pierced Will’s soul. He opened the broken window, gathered the still-warm bird in his hands, and brought it inside.
    A puff of smoke rose from the center of the bird’s chest; it smelled acrid, almost electrical. Looking closely, Will noticed an irregular line under the bird’s chest feathers, a seam where smoke continued to leak.
    Will grabbed his Swiss Army knife from the desk, opened a blade, and pressed it against the seam until he felt it give. Something small, black, and insubstantial—like a shadow—flew out of the widening crack. Startled, Will leaned away; the shadow veered out the back window and vanished.
    Will pried the crack apart. Inside he found no flesh or blood, sinew or bone. Only wires and circuits. The bird was some kind of complex machine. And its cold blank eye looked a lot like a camera lens—
    There was a sharp knock at his door. The doorknob turned. “Will, honey, are you all right?” asked Belinda just outside. “I heard something break.”
    “I dropped a glass,” he said. He stood motionless, waiting for the door to open against the chair and give away that he’d blocked it. “I’m just cleaning up.”
    She paused. “As long as you’re all right. Be careful. Dinner’s ready.”
    He listened as she moved down the stairs, then grabbed a hand towel from the bathroom and folded it around the bird. As he came back into his bedroom, he heard a car outside. Through the window that looked toward the front of the house, he saw a familiar set of headlights coming slowly down the street.
    It was Dad’s car, but after viewing that video, Will had no idea who would be behind the wheel.
    That decided it. They’d rehearsed the drill as a family countless times: two minutes to drop everything and run. Will threw first-aid supplies into his kit bag, then hurried to the bedroom and pulled out his cross-country duffel. He dropped the kit bag in with some clothes: jeans, T-shirts, his best sweater, a bomber jacket, underwear, and socks. His iPhone, iPod, MacBook, power cords, sunglasses, and the bird in the towel went in as well. He set the wedding photo of his parents on top. He grabbed a hundred and forty-three bucks—emergency savings—from a hidden slot in his desk and tossed in the Swiss Army knife.

#77: THE SWISS ARMY DOESN’T AMOUNT TO MUCH, BUT NEVER LEAVE HOME WITHOUT THEIR KNIFE.
    He added the worn notebook with the black marbled cover; over the years, he’d collected Dad’s rules in it. He pulled Lillian Robbins’s business card from the school packet, memorized her number, then stuck it into his wallet. He stuffed the packet into the bag with his wallet and