Dangerous Days of Daniel X

nothing will be a once-in-a-lifetime learning experience for them.”

I resisted the urge to wipe sweat from my forehead, and just about everywhere else on my body.

My plan was working so far, I guessed. I’d used what I’d learned from Seth’s dream to manipulate him. In the dream, he was a little mutant horse-head, and all the other horse-heads were chanting “Dumb-Dumb” at him while he was being humiliated by a horse-head teacher.

Being thought dumb was Seth’s greatest fear. Join the crowd.

And mine? Maybe being torn limb from limb by one of the strongest and most evil creatures in the known or unknown universes.

Chapter 84

TEN MINUTES LATER, the sun was blazing directly over our heads, and all the Earth kids were watching with google eyes. The scene reminded me of the Roman Colosseum, or at least the way it looked in Gladiator.

Seth’s clawed feet made nails-on-a-blackboard scratching sounds as he approached across the courtyard of our makeshift arena.

Me and my big yap, I thought. Defeat Number 6? I doubted I could last thirty seconds with the beast.

That’s when Joe started his ridiculous ringside announcement.

“Ladies and gentlemen. And all of Seth’s creeps,” Joe shouted. “In this corner, wearing Eagle Outfitter jeans and a powder blue Gap T-shirt, weighing in at one hundred and forty pounds-Daniel, the Wailin’ Alien.”

By this time, along with the Earth kids, what seemed like everyone surviving on Alpar Nok, including my aunts and uncles and my grandmother, had arrived on the scene. They’d held back at first-probably as frightened as I was-but now they were cheering like a home crowd at Dodger Stadium.

“And in the nether corner, standing seven and a half feet tall and weighing in at a whopping six hundred ninety pounds, and maybe more-Ergent ‘The Planet Eater’ Seth.”

I turned and stared at Joe.

“Would you shut up already?” I said. “You’re making him angry.”

“Angrier,” Seth corrected. “Just wait till you see angriest.”

“Sorry,” Joe said sheepishly. “I always wanted to do that. It was great!”

“Fair warning, sir,” I babbled as Seth got closer and closer. “Did I tell you? My powers came back. In full. And maybe some extra since I’m now well rested.”

Bluish light crackled from my fingertips as I spun to my left. Then an enormous wall of energy flew up, protecting the Earth children from any kind of harm.

Seth threw up one hand-the energy wall I’d created buckled and disintegrated with a loud sucking sound. The Earth kids were left unprotected again.

“You were saying something,” Seth said, holding a claw over his mouth as he yawned.

“Oh, I get it,” I said. “I’m the one who creates, you’re the one who destroys. Interesting concept.”

“Isn’t it, though?” Seth said as he rushed forward to end my life.

Chapter 85

I LET HIM keep coming until the last possible second, when I dropped low and tumbled directly under his legs. I even managed to hook my right foot around his leg and trip him.

The home and away crowd cheered as he landed hard enough to crack the stone ground.

Okay, I thought. So far, so alive.

Seth grunted as he got up and shook his mammoth shoulders. He jogged toward me, then stopped and grinned. He curled his claws, crouching in a kind of kung fu stance.

I put up my fists beside my head and crouched, waiting for the next, furious attack.

But instead of the roundhouse kick I was expecting, a forked bolt of red lightning erupted out of Seth’s mouth. It struck me point-blank in the forehead.

Not fair, I thought, as sizzling force and blinding light hit me between the eyes like a burning sledgehammer. Nobody said anything about lightning.

I stumbled back, my hair singed, my clothes black and smoking. So much for my Iliad strategy, and my being Achilles the Second, and probably my living until tomorrow morning.

“Nice try, Seth,” I said, grinning. Which was a pretty gutsy statement considering that I was about to die.

I even managed to stay on my feet. Alien Hunter rule of thumb: In the event of near electrocution, stay upright.

And then Seth changed strategies. He ran over me like a runaway freight train.

Maybe might does make right?

Chapter 86

HE ACTUALLY DROVE ME down into the stone ground a few inches. Then he wrapped me in his arms and lifted me above his head. Up close, he smelled like death, and yes, unfortunately, I have experience with that particular odor. Far too much for my tender years.

“Oh, Danny,” he said in Phoebe Cook’s voice as he drew me to him. “I love it when we hug.”

Let me walk you through the being-squeezed-to-death-by-an-alien process. First it feels like a dump truck is sitting on your chest. Then it feels like an aircraft carrier landed directly on you. Black stars begin to cloud your vision. I had never seen or even heard of black stars before. Maybe they were the last thing you got to see on your way to the other side.

“I am more,” Seth roared through gritted teeth as he continued to crush me into fine particles. “I am more.”

I could feel my bones about to pulverize, my eyeballs ready to pop from their sockets.

I held on as long as I could.

Then I forced a final smile.

“I told you I was smarter than you, Dumb-Dumb. Didn’t I tell you?”

Seth looked at me curiously, and in the next instant, everything-Seth, the improvised coliseum, the immovable crushing pressure-all of it was gone.

I was on a white sheet.

I’m not talking a regular hospital sheet or something, but an incredibly enormous, billowing white sheet, a virtual desert of a white sheet going off and out of sight in every direction.

I was clinging to it desperately. With my arms and legs and teeth.

My eight, long, segmented, covered-in-an-exoskeleton arms and legs, by the way.

I’d turned myself into a tick.

I was now too small for Seth to squeeze to death. Let’s face it. I was so small I doubted Seth could even see me.

Chapter 87