The Final Showdown - The Moon Trilogy - Book 3

Chapter eight:

   Clarity let go of Scarlett and slumped to the floor, glad to finally be free. Her wrists and ankles, and dozens of other spots where the rope had chafed into her skin were sore and inflamed.

   "What happened? Why were you gone so long?" Rachel demanded, kneeling down next to Clarity. She hadn't even seen her come over.

   Clarity explained what had happened as briefly as she could manage, and to her surprise, she got a shocking story in return.

   Apparently, Rachel and Benjamin had received a nighttime visitor. True to the word of the stranger, invitations had been sent, but the contents still remained a mystery, because the rest of the group had waited for the search party to return before reading them.

   Clarity received an invitation of her own, as did Johnny, and when they managed to rouse Scarlett, she got hers.

   Clarity waited for the others to get situated before she tore into her letter, fingers itching with curiosity. She almost hated ripping the fancy envelope. Her name looked so pretty when it was printed with such fine delicacy.

But such thoughts were forgotten entirely when she caught sight of the lettering inside.

   Sir or Ma'am,

   You are formally invited to attend a most prestigious gathering.

   We will be honoring mister Malcolm Queen on his 21st birthday. You

   are welcome to decline the invitation, but we would love it if you

    joined us for this most special of occasions. The party will be held

   at the Pontoon Historical Museum at 7 P.M. on Wednesday.

   There is no need to RSVP, and all guests who present an invitation

   will be admitted.

   Sincerely, Annabeth Queen.

   Clarity didn't know what to make of it, and her eyes tracked down the page once, then twice. The invitation didn't at all fit with the story that she'd been told just moments before. Why had they been invited? They didn't even know the people hosting the party, nor the person being celebrated. She didn't understand why they were on the guest list.

   The party was scheduled for that very night, though Clarity couldn't decide if it was a good thing or a bad thing.

   They already knew where Eric Lance was, so there really wasn't any reason to go to the party anyway.

   "I think we should go," Alex said. "We technically don't need to, yeah, but we still might find out something valuable." He was clutching the invitation in his hand. His eyes scanned the words again and again.

   "I agree." Sam piped up. "I mean, the worst thing that could happen is that we get some free food." His invitation lay on a nearby coffee table, already read and discarded.

   The two of them did have a point.

   "But just in case, we should bring some equipment if things go south. We don't want to be caught off guard." Scarlett added. Her voice was hoarse, and she held an ice pack to her head.

   And thus, it was settled. They would bring a bag with a few pieces of thier little weapon stash and their uniforms. They would keep the bag nearby, and Xenia would be waiting not far off with a rented vehicle, just in case things didn't go as planned and they had to make an escape.

   A party was formed to retrieve Eric from the scavenger's building before anything was decided for sure, but almost everyone was already planning on attending the party anyway.

   Alex, Benny, and Xenia, through the help of Johnny's translating, volunteered to go on the retrieval team to get Eric back from the scavengers. Of course, because Scarlett was still recovering from her hit to the head, she couldn't go, so it was up to Clarity to get them all to the scavenger-infested building in order to extract Eric. She didn't want to go back so soon after escaping, but she would have to in order to spare Scarlett the potentially damaging task.

   She gathered with the others going on the trip in the front hallway, and after a quick confirmation that they were all prepared, she teleported.

   Within a tenth of a second, they were back in the musty building. She'd thought ahead and teleported into one of the many empty rooms. She wasn't about to get caught in the dead center of a scavenger gathering by teleporting directly into the main room.

   She peeked into the hallway, and when she was sure that no one would be coming through any time soon, she signaled to the others that the coast was clear, and they trooped through the building to find Eric.

   Whenever they heard or saw people in their vicinity, they would duck into an open room and wait for them to pass before continuing.

    They'd searched pretty much the entire building before they turned a corner and suddenly came within full view of a roiling mob at the other end of the hall.

   There were several angry shouts, and through the din, Clarity was able to pick out only a few words.

   She pieced together the information with what she could hear and was dismayed to discover that 'someone' had escaped. She could really only assume that 'someone' was Eric Lance.

   The others had heard the same as her, and none of them needed any further convincing to leave the decrepit, infested old building. She knew for sure that she didn't want to stay in that place for more time than she absolutely needed to.

   She turned around, trying to grab hold of Alex's hand, but she must have accidentally done something wrong because as soon as her hand was behind her back, a loud clatter echoed through the hallway.

   The heads of the scavengers turned to the group at the end of the hall, and the hallway fell deathly silent.

    There were several seconds in which Clarity had an irrational spark of hope that the scavengers would ignore her small group, but she knew that that was too good to be true.

   One of the bigger men let out an ear-splitting shriek that sounded like some sort of a war-cry, which was quickly succeeded by hundreds of others from his friends. They charged forward before the sounds had died down.

   Clarity stumbled backward over a large object that must have been what she'd knocked over and landed hard on her tailbone.

   She tried to grab at anything she could reach, hoping that it would be one of the others, but her hand closed around nothing but air.

   She couldn't teleport away until she had the others, and that crazed mob was getting closer by the second.