Lost Kingdom by Matt Myklusch

Author:Matt Myklusch
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Aladdin
Published: 2020-06-16T00:00:00+00:00

11 To the Batcave

Shazad leaned forward, squinting in confusion. “Is that a vamp…?” He trailed off, unable, or perhaps just afraid to say the word out loud.

Leanora acted quickly. “Close your eyes,” she said, snatching the glowing pendant back from Shazad and springing to her feet. Joey did as he was told, turning away as she held up the magic stone. Joey had thought it was useful back in the forest, but it really came in handy as blinding light flared up like a tiny star being born. The glare was so intense it sizzled the hair on the back of Joey’s neck. Leanora’s pendant gave them instant daylight—for a few seconds anyway.

“Ahhh!” The man in black with the pale face (Joey wasn’t ready to call him a vampire yet, either) cried out and turned away, hissing.

Joey opened his eyes and the light was already gone. He tried to get a look at the man who was staggering around, reeling from the flash, but there wasn’t time. “Move!” Leanora ordered, pushing everyone up the stone path toward the castle. “I don’t think I can do that again.”

Joey didn’t need to be told twice. He ran with his friends up the path, across the lowered drawbridge, and up to the main gate of the castle. Two massive wooden doors with large iron knockers blocked their entry. The doors were fifteen feet tall and had to weigh a thousand pounds each. Wasting no time, Joey, Shazad, and Leanora chose a door and pulled back on its handle with all their might. The ancient hinges protested and the base of the door scraped against the ground, but working together, Joey and his friends cracked the door wide enough to slip inside.

“This is great—we’re running into the haunted castle,” Joey said.

“It’s not haunted,” Leanora argued.

“Tell him that!” Shazad said.

Outside, the man in black was coming up the path.

“Close the door! He can’t come in unless we invite him,” Leanora said.

“I thought that was all superstition,” Joey said, throwing his weight into the door.

“Not now,” Leanora told him.

“This is probably his house,” Shazad said as they pushed the door into place. “I don’t think he needs an invitation.”

“Lock him out, then,” Leanora said, spotting a crossbar on the inside of one of the doors. She tapped her stone pendant to give Shazad and Joey more light as they pushed a rusty iron bar into position. “He’ll have to break this door down if he wants to come after us.”

“Aren’t vampires super strong?” Joey asked.

“He’s not a vampire. He can’t be,” Leanora said, still struggling with the idea. Joey looked at her skeptically. “Okay, he might be a vampire,” she admitted.

Joey grunted as if to say, That’s what I thought. “Let’s get out of here. Shazad, where do we go?”

“Down,” Shazad said instantly. “We go down. One hundred doors in the dungeon. Look for stairs.”

They entered the castle’s great hall, but it was difficult to see anything. The only light they had came from Leanora’s pendant. “I can make it a little brighter,” Leanora said, holding the sunstone up like a lantern.

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