AFTER ALL THIS TIME, ONLY NOW DO I UNDERSTAND. The morning runs when I would run too fast for him to keep pace. He would disappear into the woods, reappear seconds later in front of me. Six tried to tell me. Six took one look at him and she knew immediately. On those runs Bernie Kosar went into the woods to change himself, to turn himself into a bird. The way he would rush outside each morning, nose to the ground, patrolling the yard. Protecting me, and Henri. Looking for signs of the Mogadorians. The gecko in Florida. The gecko that used to watch from the wall while I ate breakfast. How long has he been with us? The ChimÃra, the ones Iwatched being loaded into the rocket did they make it to Earth after all?
Bernie Kosar continues to grow. He tells me to run. I can communicate with him. No, thats not all. I can communicate with all animals. Another Legacy. It started with the deer in Florida on the day that we left. The shudder that ran up my spine as it passed something along to me, some feeling. I attributed it to the sadness of our leaving, but Iwas wrong. Mark Jamess dogs. The cows I passed on my morning runs. The same thing. I feel like such a fool to discover it only now. So blatantly obvious, right in front of my face. Another of Henris adages: Those things that are most obvious are the very things were most likely to overlook. But Henri knew.
That is why he said no to Six when she tried to tell me.
Bernie Kosar is done growing; his hair has fallen away, replaced by oblong scales. He looks like a dragon, but without the wings. His body is thick with muscle. Jagged teeth and claws, horns that curl like a rams. Thicker than the beast, but far shorter. Looking every bit as menacing. Two giants on opposite sides of the clearing, roaring at one another. Run, he tells me. I try to tell him that I cant. I dont know if he can understand me. You can, he says. You must.
The beast swings.A hammer swing that starts in the clouds and pours down with brutality. Bernie Kosar blocks it with his horns and then charges before the beast can swing again. A colossal collision in the very center of the clearing. Bernie Kosar thrusts up, sinks his teeth into the beasts side. The beast knocks him back.
Both of them so quick that it defies all logic. Bleeding gashes already down the sides of each. Iwatch with my back against the tree. I try to help. But my telekinesis is still failing me. Blood still pours down my back. My limbs feel heavy, as though my blood has turned to lead. I can feel myself fading.
The beast is still upright on two legs while Bernie Kosar must fight on four. The beast makes a charge. Bernie Kosar lowers his head and they smash into one another, crashing through the trees off to my right side. Somehow the beast ends up on top. It sinks its teeth deep in Bernie Kosars throat. It thrashes, trying to tear his throat out. Bernie Kosar twists under the beasts bite but he cant shake free. He tears at the beasts hide with his paws but the beast doesnt let go.
Then a hand reaches out behind me, grabs my arm. I try to push it away but Im incapable of doing even that. Bernie Kosars eyes are closed tightly. He is straining under the beasts jaws, his throat constricted, unable to breathe.
No! I yell.
Come on! the voice yells behind me.
We need to get out of here.
The dog, I say, not comprehending whose voice it is.
The dog!
Bernie Kosar is being bitten and choked, about to die, and there isnt a damn thing I can do about it. I wont be far behind. Iwould sacrifice my own life for his. I scream out. Bernie Kosar twists his head around and looks at me, his face scrunched tightly in pain and agony and the oncoming death he must feel.
We have to go! the voice behind me yells, the hand pulling me up from off the forest floor.
Bernie Kosars eyes stay fixed on mine. Go, he says to me. Get out of here, now, while you can. There isnt much time.
I somehow reach my feet. Dizzy, the world cast in a haze around me. Only Bernie Kosars eyes remain clear. Eyes that scream Help! even while his thoughts say otherwise.
We have to go! the voice yells again. I dont turn to face it, but I know whose it is. Mark James, no longer hiding in the school, trying to save me from this clash. His being here must mean that Sarah is okay, and for a brief moment I allow myself to be relieved, but then that relief vanishes as quickly as it came. In this exact moment only one thing matters. Bernie Kosar, on his side, looking at me with glassy eyes. He saved me. Its my turn to save him.
Mark reaches his hand across my chest, begins pulling me backwards, out of the clearing, away from the fight. I twist myself free. Bernie Kosars eyes slowly begin to close. Hes fading, I think. I wont watch you die, I tell him. Im willing to watch many things in this world but Ill be damned if Ill watch you die. Theres no response. The beasts bite hardens. It can sense that death is near.
I take one wobbly step and pull the dagger from the waistband of my jeans. I close my fingers tightly around it and it comes alive and starts glowing. Ill never be able to hit the beast by throwing the dagger, and my Legacies have all but vanished. An easy decision. No choice but to charge.
One deep, shaky breath. Irock my body backwards, everything tensing through the ache of exhaustion, not an inch anywhere on me that doesnt feel some sort of pain.
No! Mark yells behind me.
I lunge forward and sprint for the beast. The beasts eyes are closed, jaws clamped tightly around Bernie Kosars throat so that the moonlight glows in the pools of blood around it. Thirty feet away. Then twenty. The beasts eyes snap open at the exact moment I jump. Yellow eyes that twist in rage the second they focus upon me, sailing through the air towards them, dagger in both hands held high over my head as though in some heroic dream I never want to wake from. The beast lets go of Bernie Kosars throat and moves to bite, but surely it knows that it has sensed me too late. The blade of the dagger glows in anticipation, and I jam it deeply into the eye of the beast. A liquid ooze immediately bursts out. The beast lets out a blood-curdling scream so loud that its hard to imagine the dead being able to sleep through it.
I fall flat on my back. I lift my head and watch the beast totter over me. It tries in vain to pull the dagger from its eye, but its hands are too big and the dagger is too small. The Mogadorian weapons function in some way that I dont think Ill ever understand, because of the mystical gateways between the realms. The dagger is no different, the black of the night rushing into the eye of the beast in a vortexlike funnel cloud, a tornado of death.
The beast falls silent as the last of the great black cloud enters its skull, and the dagger is sucked in with it. The beasts arms fall limply to its sides. Its hands begin to shake. A violent shake that reverberates throughout the entirety of its massive body. When the convulsions end the beast hunches over and then falls to the ground with its back against the trees. Sitting, but yet still towering some twenty-five feet over me. Everything silent, hanging in anticipation of what is to come. A gun fires once, very close so that my ears ring for seconds afterward. The beast takes a great breath and holds it in as though in meditation, and suddenly its head explodes, raining down pieces of brain and flesh and skull over everything, all of which quickly turn to ash and dust.
The woods fall silent. I turn my head and look at Bernie Kosar, who still lies motionless on his side, his eyes closed. I cant tell if hes alive or not.As I look at him, he begins to change again, shrinking down to his normal size, while remaining lifeless. I hear the sound of crunching leaves and snapping twigs nearby.
It takes all the strength I have just to lift my head an inch off the ground. I open my eyes and peer up into the haze of night, expecting to see Mark James. But its not him standing over me. My breath catches in my throat.A looming figure, indistinct with the moons light hovering just over it. Then he takes one step forward, blotting out the moon, and my eyes widen in anticipation and dread.