Gatekeepers by Robert Liparulo

Author:Robert Liparulo [Liparulo, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
Tags: Fiction, Fantasy, General, Thriller, Science Fiction, Mystery, Adventure, Action & Adventure, ebook, book, Juvenile Fiction, Fantasy & Magic, Time Travel, supernatural, Young Adult, Family, Brothers and Sisters, Dwellings, House & Home, Remodeling & Renovation, Siblings, Paranormal Fiction, Paranormal
ISBN: 9781595544988
Publisher: Thomas Nelson Inc
Published: 2008-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER

twenty -six

WEDNESDAY, NOON

David sat in the Mission Control Center, his head bowed toward the PSP in his hands. His teeth pushed into his bot-tom lip as he clicked the buttons that caused his on-screen soccer player to make a bicycle kick for the goal: right past the tender and in! As the crowd roared and a teammate gave him a high five, he glanced up to a computer monitor on a desk in front of him.

Xander’s face filled the screen. The camera he’d picked up at the hardware store after breakfast made his eyes appear unnaturally large. The pencil he held in his mouth looked more like a horse’s bit. He was squinting over the camera, so it seemed like he was staring at David’s hair. Xander looked over his shoulder at the crooked hallway of doors behind him, then wiggled the camera around. He was mounting it above the doorway between the third-floor landing and the hall.

Static flashed on the screen, then a band of snow scrolled from the top of the screen to the bottom.

“We’re getting interference!” David called over his shoulder.

“What?” Toria called back from the base of the stairs leading to the third floor. She was roughly midway between David and Xander and was conveying their words back and forth.

“We’re getting—” David started.

More static broke Xander’s face across the screen.

“Hold on!” David said. He pushed back from the desk and stepped out of the MCC.

They had turned what Mom had called the servants’ quarters into their base of operations for her rescue. The room was off a short hallway that jutted back toward the rear of the house from the second floor’s main hallway. It was close to the staircase leading to the third level, where twenty doors led into twenty small rooms and, beyond them, twenty portals opened into different times, different “worlds”— all of them on earth, but so unlike the time and places the Kings knew, they might as well have been alien planets.

The staircase itself was hidden behind the wall at the end of the short hallway. One evening David and Xander had spotted the big man—the one Xander dubbed Phemus—in their house. They’d followed him and found a secret door in the wall.

Now, David stepped into the opening of that door. Six feet beyond it was another wall, this one coated in unpainted plaster. Even the unsanded swirls of the trowel that had applied the plaster were still visible. Whoever had built it wasn’t concerned about appearances: the wall was nothing more than a barrier to keep people out. Or more likely, David thought, to keep people in, to keep them from coming through the portals and into the main part of the house, as Phemus had done when he took Mom. Set in this second wall—not directly in front of the secret door, but off to the side—was another door, covered in metal.

Lot of good the extra security did, David thought.

The metal door was open, and Toria was leaning against its frame.

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