Author's Note: It turns out I forgot to put a disclaimer on "Serve the Dragon Lord", so I'll just put two on here to make up for it.
Disclaimer: I don't own Fablehaven. Brandon Mull does.
Disclaimer #2: I don't own Fablehaven.
Disclaimer #3: I also don't own the Avengers, Doctor Who, Twilight, Ninjago, Red River Valley, Harry Potter, Fruit Ninja, Star Wars, Animal Planet, Smiles to Go, Aladdin, or anything else I might have made a reference to. They all belong to their respective owners.
And now, on to the story.
"Hey, this is my phone. Leave a message, unless you're Alexis, because chances are my battery will die halfway through your monologue. I'll call you back when I can!"
The recorded voice in Lena's ear switched from Bradley's to that of the answering machine lady. "At the tone, please record your message. When you are finished recording, you may hang up or press 'one' for more options."
Lena frowned. "Hi, Bradley, it's just Lena calling to say hi. It's been…," she checked the calendar on the wall, "…ten days since I last heard from you and I'm getting a little worried. Call me back! I miss you!" She hung up, put her cell phone back in her pocket, and pouted at her unfinished homework. Why did her pre-algebra teacher have to give her thirty questions every single night?
Her mental complaining was interrupted by the sound of the front door opening and a comically deep, off-key baritone bellowing some painfully botched lyrics.
"Come sit by my side if you love me!" Bracken sang, spinning into the house with his keys jangling in his right hand. "La dee da da, to bid me adieu…can't remember the rest of the wo-ords…and the cowboy who loved you so true!" He stopped singing and peered over Lena's shoulder. "Howdy, Princess. Whatcha working on?"
"Homework," she replied flatly.
"Really? On the weekend?"
"Yeah, Miss Stokes always gives too much homework. Every day."
"That's no fun. Where's your mother?"
"Down in the basement doing some laundry."
"Still? You'd think that a house of only three people would have a lot less clothes to wash." He set his keys on the counter and began to descend the stairs, restarting his song. "From this valley they say you are going…to never be heard from again…wait, that's not how it goes…"
The basement door closed and left Lena in near silence. She bit her lip and stared blankly at the first problem on her worksheet.
If f(x)=2x-5, what is the value of f(6)?
Before Lena could pick up her pencil to work out the problem, her phone vibrated in her pocket, startling her. She quickly answered without bothering to look at the caller ID. "Hello?"
"Hey, it's me," Alexis greeted on the other end. Lena could faintly hear some adventurous-sounding music and muffled explosions in the background. "I'm going to a concert for one of my dad's friend's kids with my dad this evening so my mom gave me twenty bucks to pay for the ticket and I've got like five hours until I have to go and the concert tickets only cost like six or seven dollars plus I think my dad's gonna pay for it anyway so I've got twenty bucks and five hours to burn and I'm bored."
"You don't sound like you're bored. What's that noise?"
"I'm just playing a video game. But it's a level that I've already passed, so yeah. Wanna go to Dairy Queen or someplace?"
"I have homework."
"No you don't, it's Saturday. Homework's a Sunday problem."
Lena laughed softly. "Okay, but your parents'll have to pick me up. Mine are busy."
"Nah, we'll just walk. It's not too far from my house. If you want, I could come over to your house and we could walk over together."
"Sure, why not?"
"Cool, I'll be over in a little bit. Maybe I'll ride my bike. Do you have a bike? Actually, bikes are no fun when you're with a friend, cus then you can't talk to each other. I'll just walk. Be there in a bit!"
The line disconnected. Lena put her phone back in her pocket and picked up her pencil, deciding to just work on her homework until Alexis arrived.
"From this valley they say you are going," she hummed to herself as she wrote down the answer to the first problem, mentally blaming her dad for getting the song stuck in her head. "I shall miss your bright eyes and sweet smile…"
XIXIXIX
Alexis took the walk to Dairy Queen as the perfect opportunity to catch Lena up on the gossip at school—the poor girl had only been at this school for two weeks. Someone had to get her up-to-date with who-likes-who and she-said-that. "So now Brenna's dating Donovan again even though she said she would let Samantha date him, and Samantha's like crushed to pieces cus she's like obsessed with Donovan."
"Wait, I thought Brenna was dating Eddie," Lena replied.
Alexis adjusted her large pink purse on her shoulder. "She was, but then he found out she still liked Donovan and he was all like 'Go ahead, follow your heart, I'll be fine' and he said he'd talk to Samantha cus he and her are like close friends and it was actually really sweet how he just helped Brenna be with Donovan again instead of getting all jealous."
"Aw, that is sweet!"
"I know, right? But now Samantha's upset cus of that so Eddie's trying to take her mind off Donovan and as far as I know, it's not working."
"That's too bad. Is that the Dairy Queen sign up there?"
"Yeah. You go on, let me tie my shoe quick."
Alexis bent down and picked up one of her loose shoelaces. It was a bit soggy from being dragged through the snow, but not too wet to touch. When she finished tying her shoe, she looked up and realized she was being watched.
A young boy stood staring at her from across the street. He was skinny and scruffy, with black hair that stood straight up in some places and light brown skin. He was wearing a thin, slightly worn black hoodie and faded blue jeans with ripped knees. He looked about twelve years old, and his dark eyes were twitching slightly but steadily fixed on Alexis. She called out a greeting and waved, but the boy didn't respond or look away, simply continuing to stare.
"Dude, Lena, come here," Alexis said. Lena turned and looked where Alexis pointed.
"I don't see anything," Lena said.
Alexis looked back at where the boy had been standing. "Whoa, where'd he go? He disappeared!"
"Who did?"
"This kid. He was right over there staring at me."
"Weird." Lena continued walking toward the restaurant. Alexis stood there for a moment, wondering where the boy could have gone, before shrugging and following her friend, who had already entered the building and was probably deciding what to order while she waited.
Alexis stepped up onto the curb edging the shrubbery-dotted median between the parking lot of Dairy Queen and that of the store beside it, walking on the thin raised block of concrete as if it was a balance beam, her purse swinging around as she did so. A bit of motion in her peripheral vision caught her attention, and she looked up to see the boy from across the street standing in an empty parking space in front of her. He was still staring at her, but his eyes were no longer twitching. His hands were hidden in the large front pocket of his hoodie.
"Hi," Alexis smiled, jumping down from the curb. "Has anyone ever told you that you're like a ninja or something? Cus you were just across the street like two seconds ago and now all of a sudden you're right here. How'd you get there without making any noise? And how'd you go so fast that Lena couldn't even see you when I pointed you out?"
The boy didn't respond, didn't move, didn't even blink.
"That was you, right? Or do you just have like a doppelganger or something? That'd be pretty cool actually, to have someone that looks just like you, cus then—" She stopped, noticing that the boy was still staring solemnly at her making no move to reply. "What's wrong?"
His hands moved subtly in his pocket.
"Can you talk?" Alexis inquired.
After a moment, the boy slightly shook his head.
Alexis frowned. "Well, that's too bad."
He nodded slowly, never removing his dark brown eyes from Alexis' face. After a moment of trying to ignore it in silence, Alexis became officially creeped out.
"Why are you staring at me like that?" she asked. "Hi, this is me, I'm Alexis Blaskenjoom, not really much to look at. Are you expecting me to do something crazy or something? At least try to sign language or something. Why can't you talk? Is it just that you don't know how or you don't have a voice or what?"
The boy moved his hands in his pocket again, as if shifting his grip on some hidden thing he held. There was a quiet clicking sound as he did, but not very noticeable.
"Do you want to say something?"
He gave a nod.
"Could you, like, write it down or something?" She reached into her purse, pulled out a tattered spiral notebook and a purple gel pen, and handed them to the boy. His eyes strayed from her face for the first time as he took his hands out of his pocket, grabbed the pen and notebook, opened to a blank page, and began writing. When he finished, he turned the notebook around to show Alexis. His handwriting was large, spiky, and slanted to the right, hardly legible.
You are Charlotte von Zé?
Alexis furrowed her brow. "Uh, no, I'm Alexis Blaskenjoom. My middle name is Charlotte, though, and it'd be cool to have a last name like that—"
The boy nodded and turned the notebook back around, quickly scrawling something else onto a different page. You are friends with the daughter of light and the son of darkness. You have met a direct descendant of the somewhat infamous Patton Burgess.
She swallowed, realizing that he meant Lena, Bradley, and Will. "Yeah. Why? How'd you know that?"
The boy wrote one last thing in the notebook.
You killed Aisha. The little shadow charmer girl.
Alexis shifted her purse on her shoulder and looked up from the paper to the boy's dark, emotionless eyes. They seemed to be staring straight into her, as if trying to read a soul that was trapped behind stone walls. The boy nodded again and put one hand back into his pocket.
"I-I'm sorry if you knew her, if you were friends with her," she said evasively. "But she was…she was, like, turning evil and stuff and trying to kill Lena and I just didn't know what to do and I was scared and I was already upset because…Look, it wasn't my fault."
He shook his head and let the hand holding the pen and notebook hang by his side, his other hand moving slightly in his pocket. Alexis' brown eyes lowered to the pocket as he began to pull something out of it. Something small, dark, and made of metal.
A simple black handgun, pointed directly at Alexis.
Before Alexis could even open her mouth to scream, he pulled the trigger. There was a loud boom, an explosion of pain through her body, and then nothing but blackness.