confusion. Their eyes flicked back and forth between Orcadia and Brendan. They didn’t know what to do.
Brendan stood with his mouth open in shock. A wave of dizziness swept over him. He felt leaden and fatigued. “What’s her problem? Why is she…?” The look on Kim’s face stopped him. Kim was looking at him with undisguised amazement. “What did I do?”
“You Compelled her,” Kim said, mounting the steel steps. “But she’s trying to resist it.”
“Compelled her? I don’t understand.”
Kim looked at Brendan with what might have been a grudging respect. “You’re a bag of surprises. You have no training but it would appear you have some raw talent. You did the same thing with Chester on the school steps today. Remember?”
Brendan recalled the stricken look on Chester’s face and the way the bully had run off without a backward glance. “Are you kidding me? I did that?” He looked at Orcadia, who was straining against some invisible force. “Me?”
“Yes, pal. You. And now we have to get out of here before she overcomes the Command.” Kim pushed past him and looked into the hatch. “This will have to do.”
Brendan was still focused on Orcadia as she strained to control the urge to leave. “That’s insane. I did that?”
“Congratulations-now can we get out of here?” Kim said, her voice heavy with sarcasm. She grabbed Brendan by the arm and swung him around until he was in the hatch. “Open that up.” She pointed at the inside hatch. “That’s our way out.”
“Are you nuts? It goes right down into the middle of the lake. We’ll drown!”
Kim grabbed the front of his shirt and shouted in his face. “We don’t have any choice. At least we can get in and close the door. We’ll be safe for a while until I can call for help.” Kim shoved him backward into the chamber. His heels caught on the frame of the hatch, and he fell with a splash in the cold water on the floor of the chamber. Kim threw her knapsack in after him, whacking Brendan in the back of the head.
He pulled himself to his feet using the wheel of the inner hatch. “There’s no need to-” He didn’t get to finish: the world detonated.
He was thrown against the inner hatch, his head banging painfully on the hard surface. Blue light washed over him. He shook his head to clear it, looking out into the room.
Orcadia hovered in the air. All around her the floor was scorched. The Kobolds whined and cringed away from their master, terrified by the release of energy. Kim’s hair danced in the storm of static electricity but she still stood, barring the way.
“That’s better,” Orcadia purred as she floated toward them. “I don’t know how you managed that, nephew. Very impressive! You obviously have great natural gifts. I was careless. I left myself open. It won’t happen again. You have great power waiting to be unleashed. I can help you. Come to me and learn your true potential. Come along before I lose my patience.” The last word came out in a seething hiss.
She raised her hand and gestured toward the power cable running along the wall. A blue sparking ribbon of energy leapt from the cable into her open palm as if she were leaching electricity from the grid into her body. The lights overhead flickered.
“This is your last warning, Ki-Mata,” Orcadia announced. “Stand aside.”
“Sorry, Sparky.” Kim shook her head, bracing herself. “You’re gonna have to go through me.”
Orcadia shrugged. “If you insist.” She cocked her arm back and hurled a ball of energy directly at Kim. Kim swung her field hockey stick and struck the ball squarely. There was a blinding flash and Kim was flung backward, sailing through space and slamming into the frame of the hatch. Her hair and clothing steamed. She lay slumped on her side, not moving.
Brendan was horrified. He looked at Kim, inert on the floor. She was still breathing but was completely unconscious. He crouched down and took hold of her shoulders.
“Kim,” he shouted. “Kim!” She moaned but didn’t awaken.
“Now it’s just you and me,” Orcadia said, as if reading his thoughts. The woman’s eyes glowed with triumph. “Poor little boy! So confused. Don’t worry. Auntie Orcadia is here to make everything right. You don’t even know why this is happening, do you? Don’t worry. Everything is going to be fine. Join us and be a part of the change that is coming. You could be a True Prince in the world we will create. Does that interest you?”
Brendan was silent.
“You’ve tasted a little of what you might become, Breandan. I will guide you, instruct you. You will be my apprentice.”
Brendan looked at her face, so pale and beautiful. Part of him wanted to say yes. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to follow her out of this dark place and do as she wished. He was tempted.
Brendan looked down at Kim, resting against him. Her face was pale and her breathing ragged. Her school uniform was scorched, charred around the edges. What would happen to her? She was annoying. She had pretended to be his friend for months while hiding her true intentions. True. But she was trying to help me. I have to choose someone to trust. Everything has turned upside down in the last couple of days. My parents aren’t really my parents. People want to capture or kill me. I’m not even Human.
Orcadia’s voice broke into his thoughts. “You look like your father.” Her voice was thoughtful. “Your mother certainly, yes. But the eyes: that’s your father for sure.”
Brendan looked up at her. “You know my father?”
“I should say so,” she chuckled. “He was my brother.” She saw Brendan’s shocked expression. “I don’t call myself your auntie for nothing, you know.” Orcadia cracked her knuckles elaborately, like a safecracker preparing to open a safe.
“Come now, get out of the way. I’ll kill her and we’ll go,” Orcadia said impatiently.
“No,” Brendan said firmly. “I won’t let you.”
“I’m losing my patience.” She raised her hands. They crackled with blue fire.
Brendan made his choice.
He grabbed fistfuls of Kim’s blouse and hauled her into the maintenance chamber. As an afterthought, he grabbed her field hockey stick, now charred and blackened, lying on the floor.
“Where are you going, Breandan? You can’t hide from your auntie Orcadia!” Orcadia drifted closer.
He ignored her. He grabbed the open hatch and pulled. The Kobolds leapt forward, transforming into hounds as they came. One of them jammed its slavering snout in the doorway as Brendan tried to push it shut. He punched it hard on its wet nose. With a yelp, the dog retreated. Brendan slammed the hatch shut with a clang.
“You can’t esca-!” Orcadia’s voice was cut off as the hatch closed. All sound was muffled, but Brendan thought he heard a scream of frustration, which was satisfying, but when he thought about how miserably trapped he and Kim were in the tiny metal chamber, he felt foolish. Their reprieve was short-lived: either they would be forced to come out of the hatch eventually to face Orcadia and her drooling canines or they would have to try the pipe, which was certain death by drowning. Brendan’s grim musings were interrupted by a sudden clanging thud against the outer hatch.
The metal had seemed reassuringly thick when he’d slammed it shut on the canine horrors and their mad mistress. Now a massive dent appeared in the hatch.
“Are you serious?” Brendan shouted at the hatch.
He was answered by another clanging thud. The hatch bowed farther in.
“Oh, come on. I mean, I was totally ready to accept my death in here, and you won’t even grant me that dignity you… stupid… dog things!” He kicked the hatch in frustration and immediately regretted it. His foot throbbed. “Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow.”
He sat with his back against the inside hatch and rubbed his foot in his hands. He didn’t think he’d broken anything but it sure hurt.
The darkness wasn’t complete. A small red indicator light on the wall by the inner hatch was the only illumination. Brendan pulled Kim up so that they were sitting side by side. Thuds rang against the hatch like a bell. The hatch was holding but for how long? He put his arm around Kim and waited.
The scrape of claws raking across the outer hatch interrupted his moment’s reverie. Could they cut through steel? I guess I’ll find out soon enough. And the noise! Deafening. So deafening, in fact, that at first he didn’t notice the knocking on the inner hatch.
During a lull in the Hounds’ assault, he realized that he’d been hearing the tapping for quite some time, but
