Halloween of the Briar King by Karsten Knight

Author:Karsten Knight [Knight, Karsten]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Karsten Knight

14

I whirled around, expecting to find myself in the clutches of one of the Briar King’s minions. Who had he sent to attack me this time? A werewolf?

I let out a sigh of relief when I recognized the tall girl dressed as the Statue of Liberty. It was just Lesley. Even the green face paint and her spiked crown couldn’t hide her freckles and red hair.

Lesley let go of my arm and collapsed in on herself with laughter. “You should have seen your face!” she said, then imitated me frozen in fright.

I crossed my arms. “Thanks for scaring the living pulp out of me,” I said. “I think I peed myself a little. What are you even doing here?”

Lesley stepped to the side, and that’s when I saw her younger twin sisters standing behind her, dressed as sharks. They were only six years old, but like Lesley, they were already half a foot taller than everyone else their age.

“Mom asked me to take these dorks trick-or-treating before the competition tonight,” Lesley explained. “What are you doing out here, though? I thought you were home putting the finishing touches on your armor.”

I opened my mouth, about to blurt out everything that had happened in the last three hours. Lesley was my best friend. We always told each other literally everything. There were no secrets between us.

I couldn’t bring myself to tell her about the Briar King and the Halloween Trials, though. She would probably either just assume I was making up a story to scare her, or she would think I had totally lost my mind.

No, I could tell her later, hopefully when I had a pile of treasure to show her as proof.

“I, uh, just decided at the last minute to do some trick-or-treating,” I lied. “I thought it might help me relax before the competition. It’s not Halloween unless you end the night with a big bag of candy, right?”

“Why don’t you join us for a little bit?” Lesley asked. “I was going to head to the school soon to set up, but I don’t want you to have to go trick-or-treating by yourself.”

I was about to answer, but I caught a flash of something metallic down the street. A group of kids were crossing the intersection. Judging by the size of them, they must have been a little older than us, maybe fourteen or fifteen.

One of them briefly turned in my direction. His gold mask glimmered under the streetlight.

Finally, I thought.

I’d been so distracted by the gold mask that I forgot Lesley was still there, waiting for a response. She snapped her fingers in my line of vision. “Earth to Rebecca,” she said. “You just totally zoned out. You feeling okay?”

“Yeah, I …” My words petered out as I watched the group of trick-or-treaters turn the corner, disappearing out of sight. I couldn’t let the kid in the gold mask get too far away, or I’d risk losing track of him completely.

“I just remembered—I forgot to fix the antenna on my Phantom Dark helmet,” I said.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.