Relic Read online

  Relic

  by

  Steven Whibley

  Smashwords Edition

  Copyright © 2013 by Steven B. Whibley

  Smashwords Edition

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher. For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, please contact Steven Whibley at [email protected]

  Published by Steven Whibley Publishing

  Victoria, British Columbia

  www.stevenwhibley.com

  Publisher: Steven Whibley

  Editing: Mahak Jain; Maya Packard

  Copyediting: Maya Packard; Chandler Groover

  Cover Design: Pintado ([email protected])

  Interior Layout and Design: www.tammydesign.ca

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Whibley, Steven, 1978-, author

  Relic / Steven Whibley.

  (Book two of the Dean Curse chronicles)

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-0-9919208-5-3 (bound).--ISBN 978-0-9919208-4-6 (pbk.).

  ISBN 978-0-9919208-6-0 (pdf)

  I. Title. II. Series: Whibley, Steven, 1978- . Dean Curse chronicles ; bk. 2.

  PS8645.H46R45 2013 j C813'.6 C2013-904200-8

  C2013-904201-6

  Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their products are claimed as trademarks. Where those designations appear in this book, and Steven Whibley was aware of the trademark claim, the designations have been printed in initial capital letters.

  Chapter 1

  I checked my watch. “We have sixteen minutes.”

  “We’re in a mall,” Colin said. “There are literally a million ways he could die. I mean, he could slip on someone’s spilled juice box and crack his head open. Or fall down the escalator. Or maybe a chimpanzee from the pet store on the second floor will escape and—”

  “I can’t believe you’re joking about this,” Lisa said, cutting him off. “Do you realize we’re talking about a man’s life?” She shook her head, then peered down the mall and chewed her lip.

  “I’m not joking, Lisa,” Colin said. “I’m just saying that we don’t have a clue how it’s going to happen.”

  “Well, it doesn’t need to be said,” she snapped. “We all know what we’re up against.”

  “Okay, okay,” I said. “We can fight later. Right now we need to stay close to him.”

  The man, Arnold Cosler, was standing at a sunglasses kiosk less than twenty-five meters away, but we’d been following him for the past four hours—ever since he left his house at eight that morning. We were tired, we were scared, and the stress of it was totally taking its toll.

  “We can’t keep up with him if we stay together,” Lisa said. Her eyes darted to me and the cast on my leg, then away. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s not your fault, I know that. But…” She gestured to my leg. “You’re slower right now, and…” She sighed. “We just can’t fail, you know?”

  I nodded. “Fine. You two go ahead. I’ll hang back and maybe I’ll see something from a distance that might help. Just go, and keep your eyes open.”

  They sped up and I glanced at my cast and swore. My leg wasn’t even sore anymore, and I should’ve had my cast off by now, but the doctors thought I needed a bit longer, just to keep me from doing anything dangerous. “Extra cast time,” they’d called it. It felt like a time-out and I hadn’t had one of those since I was four. It was embarrassing.

  I glanced at my watch. We only had twelve more minutes. Why couldn’t he just go to a park and feed ducks on his lunch break? Why’d he have to come to a mall where, like Colin said, there were literally a million ways he could die?

  The vision I’d had nearly twenty-four hours before had been as freaky as every other vision I’d ever had: full of colorless, twisted shrieks of someone soon to be dead. The biggest problem we had was figuring out who Arnold Cosler was. At the time all I knew was I’d run into the man—literally—at the McDonald's a few blocks from my house about a month before.

  How I’d managed to remember him was beyond me.

  The biggest break was the fact that during the vision I’d kept it together enough to notice he had a dorky, car-shaped lapel pin that said, Ask me about our lease options. If I hadn’t seen that button I don’t know if we would have ever found him. But as it was, the third car dealership we went to had salesman Arnold Cosler’s picture on the wall.

  And now here we were, about to either save him or watch him die.

  I hobbled around a collection of sofas set up in the middle of the concourse and stepped up beside a Bob the Builder quarter ride. Across the concourse Mr. Cosler handed his credit card to the salesgirl manning the sunglasses kiosk. I took a second to glance around the area, hoping I’d spot something that might give me a clue of what was to come.

  There was a shoe store with a bunch of balloons out front—some kind of grand reopening or something. An elderly man was asleep in one of those two-dollar massage chairs, and another man wearing a white shirt and white pants—which had to be a uniform of some kind—was reading a newspaper on one of the benches. There were a few people milling around, but really it was only noon on a weekday. The mall was mostly empty.

  I peered overhead at the ceiling three stories above and wondered if one of the glass panels might detach itself and smash into him, but that seemed really unlikely since Lisa and Colin were practically on top of him, and I hadn’t had any visions of their deaths.

  I glanced back at my watch. Eight minutes. Mr. Cosler had wandered away from the sunglasses kiosk and had stopped at a soft pretzel shop.

  That’s when I heard the scream.

  I whirled around and glanced to the second story where the scream had come from. Pretty much right above Mr. Cosler, a toddler in a pink dress was having a Category 4 temper tantrum. From my vantage point it wasn’t easy to see, but it seemed like she was stomping and shouting and at one point she even threw a handful of something that hit her frazzled father and rained down over the balcony.

  Somehow everyone heard the screams, but no one seemed to notice the tiny pellets she’d thrown, probably raisins or Cheerios or some other toddler food.

  Focus! I turned back to Mr. Cosler. He was still at the pretzel shop, waiting for his order. Lisa and Colin looked at me expectantly and I shrugged. My watch was counting down the last couple minutes and I didn’t have a clue what was going to happen.

  The pretzel guy pulled Mr. Cosler’s snack from the deep fryer and dusted it in whatever flavor he’d ordered and handed it over. Mr. Cosler nodded to the man, took a bite, and continued wandering through the mall.

  All I could come up with was he’d choke to death. Nothing else made sense. But it was a soft pretzel. Who choked on soft pretzels?

  I crutched my way along the wall, coming up along the same path Mr. Cosler had taken. As I passed the pretzel shop, something crunched under my foot and I glanced down. M&Ms, peanuts, and raisins dotted the floor. Clearly the little girl above had picked trail mix as her weapon of choice.

  I kept moving.

  Cosler had taken a few bites of his pretzel, and as he paced down the concourse, the light shining through the glass windows overhead glinted off his wrist. At first I thought it was his watch, but then I spotted a watch on his other wrist, which meant the first one was…a bracelet?

  The only guy I knew who wore a bracelet was Reggie Sung, a kid in my grade who was about as tough as a flower petal. His bracelet was a Medic Alert; we used to joke that he was allergic to bravery.

  I jerked back and star
ed through the glass of the pretzel shop and saw some of the trail mix beside the deep fryer. Some of it must’ve fallen into the fryer too. And what is the main ingredient in trail mix? a voice in my head asked.

  That was it! I waved to Lisa and Colin. Colin looked over at me and I pointed at Mr. Cosler, then at my wrist. “He’s allergic to nuts,” I shouted.

  “What?” Colin shouted back.

  The color faded and the world became shades of gray: it was time to act. We had to do something now; our window of opportunity wasn’t going to last long.

  “Peanuts!” I practically screamed as I half hobbled, half ran. “He’s allergic to peanuts!”

  Colin’s eyes widened and he spun around. Mr. Cosler was hunched over, coughing. His pretzel, half-eaten, was on the floor.

  I couldn’t use my crutches and call 9-1-1, so I shouted, “Somebody call an ambulance!”

  Lisa was at the man’s side in a flash, and Colin a second later, just in time to have Mr. Cosler fall against him and the two of them hit the floor. When I arrived a few seconds after, the man had pushed himself to his knees and was trying to get something out of his coat. His wheezing had become a high-pitched squeal and his eyes were so wide I thought they might burst.

  “Is he choking?” Lisa shouted in a panic.

  “Nuts,” I said. “He’s allergic to nuts.”

  Mr. Cosler finally jerked something out of his coat pocket, a small cylinder the size of a large marker. I recognized it—an EpiPen, medicine to stop an allergic reaction. He was trying to do something to it, pull off the lid, maybe, it wasn’t clear.

  “Let me help you,” Lisa said. She lunged for the medicine and knocked it out of the man’s hand and sent it skittering across the floor. The man tried to grab for it, but when he missed he crumpled fully to the floor and stopped moving. Lisa let out a sound like a wounded animal and dove for the EpiPen. She grabbed it, spun back, and in one movement yanked the cap off and slammed the end of it into the man’s leg and held it there, gasping and looking around frantically.

  Colin was shaking the man’s shoulders, shouting at him to wake up.

  “Outta the way,” a female voice shouted. It was a mall security guard. She rushed in through the small crowd that had formed around us, and shouldered Colin out of the way as she knelt beside Mr. Cosler. Another officer arrived a second later and pushed the crowd back while he held a cell phone to his ear, giving directions to where we were to whoever was on the other end.

  “Allergy,” I said, practically shouting. “He’s allergic to peanuts.” I pointed at his wrist and even though it had been a hunch, sure enough, it was a Medic Alert bracelet.

  Color seeped back into my black and white world as the female guard started CPR.

  “We were too late,” Lisa said beside me. She gripped my arm. Her hands trembled. “If I hadn’t made him drop his medicine…”

  “He’s not dead,” Colin said.

  As if to prove his point, Mr. Cosler suddenly sucked in a deep breath and began coughing.

  Lisa’s head dropped and she let out a monumental sigh. Colin looked up at the ceiling and started laughing. Some of the people standing by started to clap. I just stared at the scene and shook my head. That was way too close. Way too close.

  Something to my right caught my eye, and I turned just in time to see the man in white I’d noticed earlier turn and stroll away. He glanced over his shoulder once before he rounded a corner and we made eye contact. He smirked and gave me an approving nod, then stepped out of sight.

  “Can we get out of here?” Lisa whispered.

  I nudged Colin and gestured to the exit and the three of us slipped away.

  Chapter 2

  Colin whooped when we got outside, and I was filled with such a wave of relief that if I hadn’t had crutches, I might have needed to sit down. I hadn’t had a vision since Becky, my sister, and I’d been terrified something would go wrong. But it hadn’t. Everything had gone exactly right. I turned to Lisa and she smiled, but not a natural smile—it was forced and looked sort of painful.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “Why wouldn’t she be okay?” Colin asked. “We just saved a guy.” He pointed at Lisa. “You just saved that guy.” He laughed. “That was practically ninja-like, the way you dove and grabbed that EpiPen and slammed it into his thigh.” He jumped around, acting out Lisa’s movements. “How are you not on cloud nine right now?”

  “You did save him,” I said.

  She shook her head. “I nearly killed him. I knocked the pen right out of his hand.”

  “Lisa,” Colin said, “he was going to die. He would have died if you hadn’t jabbed him when you did. He’s alive because of you.” He turned and looked at me. “And you too. How the heck did you know about his peanut allergy?”

  I quickly recounted what happened with the screaming kid, and how I’d spotted the bracelet and assumed it was a Medic Alert bracelet.

  “That’s quick thinking,” Colin said.

  “It was luck,” Lisa said. “Dumb, stupid luck.” She blew out a frustrated breath. “What is taking the Society so long, anyway? I mean they said they’d be in touch, so where are they?”

  She looked at me as if I had an answer. I shrugged and was about to remind her that the Congregatio de Sacrificio—the society I was now a part of, thanks to my visions—hadn’t reached out since they left me a note over six weeks ago. But before I could say anything, my phone vibrated with a text message and I checked the screen…and groaned.

  “What?” Colin asked.

  I replied to the text and then looked up at my friends. “I have to meet my mom and my sister.”

  “Oh, right, I forgot about your little playdate with your sister,” Colin said.

  “I kind of think it’s sweet,” Lisa said.

  “It’s not sweet,” I said. “It’s weird and it violates the laws of sibling interaction.”

  Ever since I’d “accidentally” jumped in front of a moving vehicle to save her life, my parents had been on a big push to make Becky and me better friends. Step one in their little plan was for me to be more encouraging of her hobbies—which, by anyone’s standards, were freaking weird. Mostly she collected stuff. But not normal stuff like stamps or coins or bottlecaps. A few weeks back she was collecting insects. My parents were still making me pay for stabbing one of her spiders with a fork.

  “The laws of sibling interaction?” Lisa asked.

  I nodded. “And they shouldn’t be messed with.”

  “What are you guys doing today?” Colin asked. “Chocolate sundaes at the beach? Hopscotch in the park?”

  Lisa laughed at that one, which made me smile. It seemed she didn’t laugh these days nearly as much as she used to.

  “Museum,” I said. “Apparently they have an exhibit Becky’s interested in.”

  “Sounds boring,” Colin said.

  “It will be.”

  My mom was an art history professor and the museum had a whole floor of paintings she’d helped curate several years before. I couldn’t count how many times she’d dragged me there when I was younger. “You guys should come.”

  Colin laughed like that was the funniest thing he’d ever heard.

  “I’ll come,” Lisa said. “I’m kind of in the mood for boring after what we just did.”

  “Thanks, Lisa,” I said.

  Colin stopped laughing and groaned. “Fine. I’ll come.” We started walking around the perimeter of the mall and Colin asked, “What’s your sister collecting that would be on display at a museum, anyway?”

  Now it was my turn to groan. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

  “Sounds mysterious,” Lisa said.

  “Trust me,” I said, “it’s the least mysterious collection you’ve ever seen.”

  Chapter 3

  When we got into the car, Colin asked to see Becky’s collection. She smiled and handed the box back into the back seat. I leaned away from it as Colin lifted the lid.

  �
��It looks like rocks,” Colin said.

  “It’s coprolite,” Becky said from the front seat. “They’re fossils, and pretty valuable.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I doubt that.”

  “They are!” Becky snapped. “The one at the museum is from a Tyrannosaurus rex.” She looked over her shoulder from the front seat and sneered at me. “That’s a dinosaur.”

  “You don’t say,” I muttered.

  “Okay, you two,” my mom said. “I don’t want you guys to argue. Besides, Becky is right: if they are coprolite, they can be quite valuable.”

  “They’re fossils?” Colin said. He reached in and picked up one of the pieces and held it up to his face. “Fossils of what?”

  I started to laugh.

  “It’s fossilized excrement,” Becky said.

  Lisa was seated between Colin and me and she practically crushed me against the door trying to lean away from him and the box.

  “Extra-what?” Colin asked.

  “Ex-cre-ment,” Becky said.

  Colin blinked and then turned and looked at me.

  “Turd,” I said, laughing. “You’re holding animal crap right now.”

  The coprolite dropped from his hand and he just sat there staring into the box shaking his head. “You’re collecting animal turds?” His face twisted and he turned back to me.

  Lisa and I burst out laughing. Even my mom laughed. Becky didn’t find it very funny and reached into the back seat and grabbed the box back.

  “Wait,” Colin said. “They have a giant piece of dinosaur crap at the museum? On display?”

  “Along with a T. rex skeleton,” my mom said.

  Colin dusted his hands off and then shrugged. “Actually, that sounds pretty cool.” Then he whispered, “But your sister’s still mega weird.”