“Thank you, Hermione,” said Adele Wolff. “Your faithfulness is appreciated.” Her gaze went back to Scarlett, missing nothing. “I can’t say I wasn’t expecting you back, though I certainly wasn’t expecting the police would come in right after you. I thought at first that you had called them on me, but they seem concerned only with picking up Rhonda. Serves me right for not checking her references when I hired her. That’s how it goes sometimes. I can never find good help.”
Scarlett swallowed. “Hermione said you were going to rule the world, or destroy it.”
“That’s true,” said Adele without hesitation. “One or the other.”
“Well, which is it?”
“I don’t know yet. I think we will have to wait for another time to find out.” A thin smile crossed Adele’s face. “A completely different time.”
“But that’s ridiculous!” said Scarlett. “You can’t—” She was interrupted by a low growl from the German shepherd, but she forged on. “Well, it is! Look at you! You’re . . . you’re just a restaurant owner with a dog! You can’t possibly take over the earth!”
Adele did not appear upset to be challenged. “Much of what you say is true,” she replied. “I do have more than one dog, though I have only one dog that talks. The others are in their kennel upstairs.” She glanced at the dog. “Relax, Hermione. I can handle this.”
“I will tear her down at your command,” said Hermione, eyeing Scarlett with teeth bared.
“Not now. Later, perhaps, but not now.”
“Jawohl, mein Fuehrer!” the dog snapped.
Adele turned to Scarlett. “I am a restaurant owner, in this life. I’m not a very good restaurant owner, and I freely admit I’m probably one of the worst ones ever. That’s not important. The restaurant business is only a cover. If it makes me look foolish to this abomination of a world, all the better.”
“I still don’t get it,” said Scarlett, spreading her hands in bewilderment. “None of what you’re saying makes any sense.”
“That’s good, then. That’s the way it should be.” Adele looked up at the ceiling. The sound of hard-soled shoes could be heard moving across the floor above. “The police are leaving, I think. Doesn’t sound like they found the other dogs. I wonder if Rhonda is with them. I should go up and say goodbye, give a statement, but . . . no. It doesn’t matter, either.” She looked down at the dog. “I think tonight’s the night to do it. Scarlett’s here, and there have been too many interruptions, with more sure to come. I can’t wait for the other history books to come in, and all my credit cards are maxed out. Tonight it is.”
“Tonight?” said Hermione with a touch of eagerness. “Really?”
“Yes, really,” Adele replied, giving the dog a grin. “And I haven’t forgotten my promise to change you into your former self, though I will miss your company as you are. I’ve always liked dogs, but . . .” She sighed. “You look so much like Blondi. She was a good dog.”
“Blondi?” asked Scarlett.
“The dog I had in my previous life.”
Scarlett fidgeted, becoming nervous. “What exactly are you doing tonight?”
“Putting an end to this accursed disaster of a world, then remaking it into the world it should have been.” Adele reached behind her back with her right hand, feeling for something at waist level. “But first, a little test—” Adele whipped her arm forward and threw something at Scarlett, who shrieked and flung up her hands to shield her face. By instinct, she grabbed for the oncoming object with her right hand to stop it—
—and felt a thump in her palm, her fingers snapping shut on a handle. She slowly opened her eyes and looked to see what she had caught. It was an old, long-bladed military knife, with twin lightning bolts and a swastika engraved on its bright golden handle.
“It is you,” said Adele, surprise evident on her face. “Farkas was right. You are the one he was looking for! Hermione!”
Before Scarlett knew what to do next, Hermione leaped up and gently caught Scarlett’s right wrist in her mouth, putting her forepaws on the girl’s chest. The dog glared at Scarlett and applied increasing pressure with her teeth until Scarlett let go of the weapon, which fell to the floor. The dog got down again, picked up the knife’s golden hilt with her mouth, and trotted away to place the blade at Adele’s feet.
“Danke,” said Adele, picking up the knife and putting it back in its sheath behind her, under her skirt’s waistband. She smirked at Scarlett. “From the look on your face, I’ll bet no one’s ever thrown a knife at you before. Scarlett Pendragon, daughter of King Arthur and the supernatural Lady of the Lake, the water spirit who according to legend could catch thrown swords with ease. So much like your mother. You have a curious pedigree, I admit. I am not well versed in Arthurian lore, but I did not believe Arthur and Viviane had ever been lovers. So much for that. They obviously grew fond of each other over the centuries they spent on that mythical island of theirs. I wonder what Morgan le Fay thought of that. Whatever. You did not come here through this gateway, I know, so there must be others.” She looked thoughtful. “I should ask Farkas about it. That could be trouble.”
“What kind of bull is that about my dad being King Arthur?” Scarlett retorted. “My father and mother are dead! They weren’t myths, they were real people! You don’t know anything about them!”
“Before I met Farkas, that was true: I didn’t. And from what Farkas said, your parents weren’t myths before, but they certainly are now.” Adele glanced down at Hermione. “Go upstairs the secret way and see if everyone’s gone, then tell the clones to come on in. I summoned them when the police arrived, but I had them wait a couple blocks away. Farkas will get here on his own instincts. He always does.”
“Will you be all right down here with her?” asked Hermione, getting to her feet.
“Perfectly fine,” said Adele with a twisted smile. “Hurry, we have much to do before we’re interrupted again.”
The German shepherd trotted off toward the wall behind Adele, pressed the top of her head against a certain spot, then left through the tall trapdoor that appeared in the wall to her left. The trapdoor closed a moment later. Now I know how that lady got in here, Scarlett thought.
“If you try to overpower me, I will not be gentle with you,” said Adele, watching Scarlett closely. “If it looks like you are trying to cast a spell on me, I will be equally un-gentle. Think before you act.”
“I want to know what you’re going to do with me,” Scarlett said, fighting down her fear.
“Give you to Farkas, of course, for whatever he wishes to do with you. We had an agreement on that. He would do certain favors for me, and I would do certain favors for him. We’ve been very good for each other since he came here through my gateway.”
“Who is Farkas?”
“I think you know him as Bruno Nagy.”
Oh, crap. Scarlett felt her heart sink. “Is there any way you can explain this to me, what’s really happening? I’m totally lost here.”
Adele considered the request, then shrugged. “We have a little time.” She stepped forward, rounding a stack of boxes, and took off her Nazi officer’s cap. “It looks strange, I know,” she said, looking at the cap in her hands. “A dreadful affectation of mine. It’s the real thing, a Luftwaffe captain’s hat, and it . . . well, never mind. A bedtime story for a little girl—I believe I can do that.”
She approached within ten feet of Scarlett and stopped, still looking down at the hat. “Once upon a time,” she said, “there was a little community called Lawndale, and in that little community was an old building. It was built in the late eighteen hundreds as a bank, but it changed hands many times and became a real-estate office, an accounting office, a classroom annex, and several times a restaurant. This building acquired a bad reputation over time, too. There seems to have been something wrong in its construction, some quirk that made it . . . strange, untrustworthy . . . unlikable, that would be the best word. Rumor had it that the building was haunted. Odd things happened in it. Strange drafts were felt, strange sounds were heard, and people who worked there sometimes disappeared for good. Not everyone believed these stories, so the building changed hands, over and over, until recently when I bought it from a Chinese family who could no longer tolerate the building’s peculiarities.”
Adele put the cap back on her head and looked at Scarlett again. “I was different, because I was born just behind this building in the alley, just over fifty years ago. My mother was taking a shortcut while visiting neighbors and went into labor right where that dumpster sits now. A woman should never tell her age, but I am fifty-two, and I don’t mind if I tell my age because I wasn’t a woman once. I was a man, and I had the entire world within my reach.”
Scarlett was aware of her own breathing. “Adolf Hitler,” she said.
Adele nodded once. “My compliments to your history teacher.”
“But Hitler’s dead!”
“His soul is not.” Adele crossed her arms in front of her and began to pace, keeping Scarlett within view as she walked. The faded tattoos of swastikas on her arms were clearly visible. “I came to full self-awareness at puberty, though I’d had dreams and intuitions about my real identity before then. I have no idea how it happened that I was reborn. Unlike Hermione or that mouse you own—the one that Farkas is seeking too, by the way—unlike them, I was truly born, not created out of nothing. It seems to be a quirk of the gateway to do that. At any rate, I lived most of my life here in town, slowly regaining my old knowledge and sense of things, and I began to read to learn more about what happened, how things turned out after . . . after my previous life ended.” She took on a resigned expression. “I was disappointed, to say the least, though I knew things had not turned out well. Even my own people have turned against me. Those who believe in my cause number in the hundreds when once they were in the millions. My name is cursed and reviled, or else I am made fun of in stupid movies. So it goes with the ignorant.
“As you can imagine, I knew early on not to discuss my true nature with anyone, especially my family, who already believed I spent entirely too much time with books and not enough time doing womanly things, like cooking or dating.” Adele’s face with filled with loathing. “Those things did not interest me in the slightest. I was interested only in my legacy . . . and my destiny.”
She stopped and turned to regard Scarlett. “Have you ever heard the urban legend about the House of Bad Grades?”
Startled, Scarlett nodded. “The place where that girl was accidentally sealed up in a fallout shelter so she couldn’t go to college, and—”
“That part’s a lot of nonsense, but the story began with this building. When I was a girl in the nineteen fifties, living next door to this place, it was being used as an annex for the local high school, which was much smaller than it is now. The students who studied in this building said it was haunted, and they invented all sorts of stories to explain why they couldn’t do their work. That’s how the legend got started, right here.”
Screwing up her courage again, Scarlett asked, “Is this building haunted?”
Adele smiled again. “No. Not haunted.” She looked to once side, at a huge poster of Hitler in medieval armor, riding a horse and carrying a Nazi banner in his right hand. “It has a gateway.”
Scarlett remembered Adele using that term earlier. “What do you mean, a gateway?”
“It is difficult to explain.” Adele began pacing again, ever watchful. “The short form of it is, the rear wall of this building, where the back alley is, is the boundary of an invisible door that opens into other worlds and universes. It opens into other timelines and other realities, sometimes at random and sometimes on command. Do you read any science fiction?”
Ever more nervous, Scarlett thought carefully about her answer. “A little.”
“I read a lot of it in my previous life, all the major authors of the time: Wells, Gernsback, Amazing Stories, that kind of thing. It prepared me for the unexpected, so I quickly recognized the gateway for what it was. This building is not haunted in the usual sense, but you could say it is haunted by possibility, as the gateway connects to every possible world you can imagine, even fantasy ones. Farkas himself came from one of those other worlds, a sort of alternate history where the Central Powers of World War One triumphed, then triumphed again in World War Two, conquering all but the Americas. The British had to flee to Canada. I think Farkas had some hand in the destruction of Avalon, but that’s for him to say. At any rate, I have many times tested the gateway’s range of possibilities and found them as real as the world we now share, you and me. And tonight . . . I mean to seize one of those possibilities and make it my own, and this reality will be no more.”
She took off her cap and tossed it to Scarlett, who tried to catch the hat but fumbled and dropped it. Scarlett picked it up and examined it with one eye on Adele, who was clearly irked by the teenager’s clumsiness. The black felt-and-leather visor cap had elaborate silver trim, with a swastika in the claws of an eagle with widespread wings. It appeared little used.
“I went back in time a few days ago and got that,” Adele said with a touch of pride. “I took it from a Luftwaffe officer who left it in his wardrobe while he was in the bathroom, showering. I used the gateway to enter his bedroom, get his cap, and leave. That was in Cherbourg in occupied France, in the year nineteen forty-two—summer, I think, as it was warm out and still early morning. I could smell the sea in the air, bakeries cooking bread.”
Scarlett looked at the cap a little longer, then put it down on a box. She knew in her bones it was the real thing, and newly made. She can do it. She really can. Great Holy Goddess.
“Don’t believe me?” asked Adele.
“No, I believe you,” Scarlett whispered after a beat. “I believe you went back in time and did what you said you did.”
Adele raised an eyebrow. “Why, though? Why do you believe me? No one else would believe it if I had told them. Why do you?”
Scarlett looked up at the tall blonde and spoke honestly. “Because I feel it. I sense it is true, in your voice, so I believe it.”
“With your magical intuition, you can do this?”
After a moment of hesitation, Scarlett nodded.
“Interesting,” said Adele. “Farkas does that, too. And what else can you sense about me?”
Scarlett knew she was entering very dangerous ground, but she moved ahead. “It’s not what I sense about you. It’s what I know, about what you said.”
Adele frowned. “What do you mean?”
“It’s what I know about Adolf Hitler, from my history class.” Scarlett steadied herself. “Mister DeMartino, my teacher, told us about Hitler the other day. He said Hitler read a lot, and he owned a lot of books, but he liked things like history, politics, stuff like that. He even read about religion and the occult, but he didn’t read science fiction, that anyone ever knew.”
Adele’s frown became a frozen mask. “Well, they were wrong, then, weren’t they?”
After a moment, Scarlett shook her head. “No, they weren’t. Mister DeMartino said that Hitler didn’t like novels, and Hitler even admitted that. He read only a few, and most of what he read were old pulp Westerns, of all things, written by some German guy. Hitler read Westerns, but not science fiction.”
A dark light began to form in the tall blonde’s eyes. “I withdraw my praise for your history teacher. He is obviously a fool.”
“He’s not a fool,” said Scarlett, growing angry. “He knows what he’s talking about.” She lifted her chin, aware now of the truth. “You’re not Adolf Hitler. You’re insane.”
Adele Wolff crossed the space to Scarlett so quickly that the girl had no time to protect herself. Stars exploded in Scarlett’s vision as a fist hammered the left side of her head. When Scarlett recovered consciousness a few seconds later, she found herself lying on her back on the floor, her left cheek in agony and a tremendous force bearing down on her chest and abdomen. She blinked and looked up to see a long knife with a golden hilt pointing at a spot between her eyes, the tip mere inches away.
“I . . . am . . . not . . . insane!” the blonde hissed, her blue eyes gleaming. “They lied about me, everyone did! My family, the doctors, everyone! I . . . have . . . never . . . been . . . insane! Never!”
Scarlett stared at the knife and did not dare breathe, though with Adele kneeling on her chest she could not have breathed even if she had tried.
“Mein Fuhrer,” came Hermione’s voice from a hidden speaker. “The police are gone, and I have summoned the clones. They should be here in a minute.”
The blonde smiled again as she got to her feet and sheathed the blade. Scarlett gasped and coughed on the floor, her head and chest aflame. She rubbed her aching face and wiped away tears.
“Any other proof you care to offer that I am not actually Adolf Hitler?” asked Adele in a casual tone, looking down at the girl at her feet.
I could, if I wanted, thought Scarlett, looking up at her nemesis. For one thing, we’ve been talking all this time, and not once have you said a single word about the Jews. Hitler would have ranted about them for hours, blaming them for all his woes, but you do not. You are not Adolf Hitler—but you ARE the most dangerous human being I’ve ever met. Scarlett slowly shook her head no.
“Good.” Adele stepped back. “Get up. Story time is over. The clones will be here soon.”
“C-c-clones?” wheezed Scarlett as she got to her knees, then to her feet. The silver ankh swung askew on its chain.
“Clones make the best soldiers,” said Adele. “Everyone knows that. Loyal, obedient, and think alike. I’ve been recruiting them for years. I recognized their potential from reading science fiction.” She gave Scarlett the eye, waiting to see if the girl challenged that statement.
Hermione was right: she’s the number-one craziest nut bar in the whole universe. I can’t afford to piss her off anymore. Scarlett swayed unsteadily on her feet as she held the side of her face. She bit the inside of her lip to keep from crying, though her eyes streamed.
“I used only natural clones, though,” Adele continued. “Natural twins, triplets, and so on. Some of them around here were created by bad fertility drugs, but a clone is a clone is a clone. I’ve even got two sets of delinquent quintuplets in my service. Can you believe that I’m Hitler now?”
“I won’t argue with you,” said Scarlett through clenched teeth. The side of her head hurt more every minute, and she knew she was going to have a terrible bruise. She leaned against a stack of boxes for support, then looked down into the uppermost box. Inside the Third Reich was the title of the book on the top.
And it came to her, then. The books, the gateway, time travel, Adele’s madness. It all made sense.
“You’re going back in time,” she said, looking up at Adele. “You’re taking all these history and science books with you, and you’re going to . . .” She broke off, overcome at the enormity of what she was saying.
Adele watched her impassively. “Go on,” she said. “You’re right so far.”
“You’re . . . you’re . . .” Scarlett forced herself to say it. “You’re going to change history.”
A nod. “Yes.”
“So the Nazis win.”
“Yes.”
“Oh.” Concentration camps, atomic bombs, ICBMs, burning cities—Holy Great GODDESS!
“‘Oh’?” said Adele with a mocking smile. “Is that all you can say? Just ‘Oh’?”
Scarlett shook her head, aghast. “You really are insane. You’re madder than mad.”
Adele’s face lost its smile. “It will be a pleasure to see you die,” she said, her face like stone. She pushed the button to summon the elevator, never taking her eyes off the smaller girl.
So, this is it, thought Scarlett with an odd detachment, listening to the elevator motor rumble as she rubbed her cheek. This is the end of my short, unfinished, not-quite-a-full life. She looked up and calmly studied her captor. I wonder if I can take her down with me. I bet I can. I don’t know how, but I know I can. I can save the world—and I will.
“Mein Fuhrer!” came Hermione’s shout over the intercom. “There’s a problem outside!”
“What problem?” Adele shouted back, still not looking away from Scarlett.
“Fighting! There’s a bunch of girls outside in sports uniforms, and they’re—” The sound of breaking glass could be heard in the background. “They’re breaking in! The clones are trying to stop them, but—”
More shattering glass was heard. Adele’s lips pulled back from her teeth. “I’m coming up!” she shouted. “Don’t let the other dogs out yet! Go to the kitchen and wait for me!”
“Jawohl!” The Intercom clicked off.
“I have a question,” said Scarlett, who feared nothing now that she knew her fate.
“Ask it, wretch,” said Adele stonily.
“Does Hermione know that Hitler poisoned his dog, before he killed himself?”
A muscle trembled in Adele Wolff’s cheek. When the elevator door opened, Adele lunged forward, grabbed Scarlett by the arm, and shoved her inside. Scarlett hit the opposite wall hard but kept her footing. Adele got in after her, punched a button, and stood facing the teenager.
“Give me one good reason to kill you before Farkas gets here,” Adele hissed. She pulled her knife out once again, gripping the golden handle in her fist. “One good reason, that’s all I ask.”
Scarlett pressed herself into a corner of the compartment and said nothing, waiting.
The elevator rumbled to a stop. The door opened to darkness and the sound of men shouting and windows breaking everywhere.
Adele motioned Scarlett forward with a wave of her dagger. “Children first,” she said, forcing a smile. “Head for the kitchen, or die here.”
Scarlett peeked out of the elevator. The main fighting was in the dining hall, not nearby. She stepped out and headed for the swinging door she thought led to the kitchen.
“Scarlett!” cried a familiar voice. She looked back and saw Tananda, her blue Lawndale Leopards jersey torn to shreds and a field hockey stick in her hands. Sweat ran down Tananda’s face in streams.
“Behind you!” Scarlett shouted, seeing movement. Tan spun, slashed downward with the stick, and struck a burly man hard on the thigh. He roared in pain but caught her as he fell. They collapsed in a furious struggle, Tan’s fists flying. More fights raged around them between stick-swinging Leopards and men wearing black clothing.
“Keep moving!” snapped Adele, stepping out of the elevator and motioning Scarlett onward with her knife.
At the same moment, Scarlett heard the door swing open behind her. “Get in here, so I can lock the door!” shouted Hermione to Adele. “There’s no time!”
“The books!” yelled Adele. “We have to bring the books up and take them through the gateway!”
“We don’t have time!” Hermione yelled back. “The attackers are everywhere!”
“Then we’ll make time! Get the girl in the kitchen and wait for me!” Adele turned, dagger out and ready, and started toward the dining hall.
Scarlett felt Hermione’s teeth clamp down on the hem of her long skirt and pull her back. No! She struggled against the pull—and felt her silver ankh bump against her chest. In an instant, she reached up, pulled off the ankh and its chain, then threw them overhand at Adele.
The ankh’s chain wrapped around one of the blonde’s bare lower legs above her ankle. Adele stepped on the end of the chain with her other foot, tripping herself, and fell on her face in the dining room entrance.
At that moment, Aunt Elaine appeared, standing over the stunned Adele with a long object in one hand and her laptop computer held under the other. “Scarlett!” she yelled. “Catch!” She threw the object she held.
It was a foot-long chef’s knife with a shining blade, coming right at Scarlett’s head.
Not again! Scarlett yelped and raised her arms to defend herself, simultaneously reaching for the whirling knife with her right hand. She knew she would catch it.
And then a leaping German shepherd was in her way. “I got it!” Hermione cried. “I g—OW!”
The knife’s heavy handle smacked the dog on the nose and was knocked to one side, away from Scarlett’s outstretched hand. It flew instead into the stone lintel on the side of the swinging kitchen door, where the blade went in up to the hilt. Scarlett stared at it for a moment in amazement. That’s Aunt Elaine’s best cutting knife! she thought. It went right into that stone! What kind of knife is that?
“Get it!” shrieked Elaine. “Scarlett, pull it out!”
Scarlett looked back at her aunt—and saw a furious Adele rise from the floor behind the older woman. Even as Scarlett opened her mouth to cry a warning, Adele’s golden-hilted dagger came down into Elaine’s back. Scarlett’s aunt cried out in pain, then toppled.
“NO!” Scarlett was hardly aware she had screamed. She stared at Adele and her dagger, standing over the body of her beloved aunt—then whirled, grabbed the hilt of the chef’s knife, and pulled it out of the stone. She turned back to Adele, seeing red . . . but something was different. Scarlett looked down at what she held in her right hand. What she held was not a knife any longer. She had a sword.
The sword was finely made of mirrorlike steel, with a long hilt of gold in the shape of two long-bodied dragons entwined in battle. The head of one dragon formed the pommel of the sword. The dragons’ tails stretched out to form the crossguard. Stunned beyond words, Scarlett lifted the blade and found the sword was perfectly balanced in her grip. Written down the length of one side of the blade were the words, PULL ME OUT. She turned the blade and read on the other side, THROW ME IN. The blade itself gave off light that filled the hallway and beyond, the peculiar illumination growing stronger by the second.
Scarlett lowered the blade, focused her rage on Adele, and took a slow step forward. And then another. And another.
“Excuse me!” Hermione whined, crouching on the floor with her tail down and ears flattened in surrender. “I was wondering if I could escape. I’ve made a terrible error and I regret it and I’ll never bother—”
“Get out of here,” Scarlett whispered.
“Right!” said Hermione, scrambling from the floor to escape. As the dog ran to get past her former mistress, Adele raised her dagger and hissed, “Traitor!” as she thrust down. Hermione yelped, staggered, then fell on her side a few paces beyond in the dining hall, whining and writhing in agony.
Scarlett continued to advance, her sword out. Adele backed up into the darkened dining room, where the sounds of all fighting had ceased. Scarlett paused to kneel by the body of her aunt, sword at the ready. The laptop lay silent at her side. Something was clutched in her aunt’s left hand. “Elaine?” Scarlett said, touching the old woman’s hair.
Elaine’s eyes opened, a faint gleam visible within. “Take this,” she whispered, putting out her left hand. Scarlett looked down and took the item: the chef knife’s sheath. She tucked it into the waistband of her long skirt without questioning the deed.
“It is yours now, your birthright,” said Elaine, her voice fading. “Excalibur the Stone-Cutter is yours. Go, and . . .” The eyes closed again. It was impossible to tell if the old woman still breathed.
Scarlett stroked her aunt’s hair, then looked around. She saw her ankh necklace on the floor, picked it up, and put it on with one hand. She then stood and walked out into the dining hall. Her sword illuminated every corner of the room with its brilliance. It was immediately evident that nearly all the Leopards were on their feet—but none of the black-clothed men were.
“Oh, my Gawd!” cried Woot, holding a tissue to her split lip. “Scarlett’s a Jedi!”
“Idiot,” snapped Adele, who raised her dagger high. She then spoke a word that sounded like tear-fing.
And instantly she held a sword of her own, a long golden-hilted weapon whose long blade gave off a fiery orange glow.
“Strange,” said Adele, lowering her blade and assuming a relaxed posture. “Very strange that our weapons came through their respective gateways in smaller form, but instinctively knew their rightful users. You have Excalibur, and I have the sword of Odin’s grandson, the superweapon of the Elder Edda, the blade that cuts through stone and steel as easily as does yours.” She grinned madly. “Only Tyrfing, my sword, never misses, and it always kills when drawn. I picked it up in another universe only a month ago, using my gateway. Took the longest time to find where it had gone, but . . . it was worth it.”
Adele made a preparatory swipe through the air, her sword leaving a trail of red flame behind it. The Leopards solemnly drew back, pulling the unconscious forms of Adele’s henchmen with them, administering a few extra blows to the “clones” who showed signs of recovering.
Scarlett swallowed. Excalibur? I’m holding the real Excalibur? She shook her head, trying to keep up with the crazed pace of events, but she felt overwhelmed. She knew nothing about swordfighting, even with a weapon as well made as Excalibur. The best she could hope for was to take Adele down before she too died, or else injure the madwoman enough for the Leopards to take her prisoner. The world depends on me, the whole world and everyone on it. I will not let them down. She thought of her aunt, of her father’s courage—and raised her sword with both hands, her chin down, her eyes up.
Adele raised her own fiery superweapon—and with a cry, she attacked.
Last updated 12/26/06