The Shadow Mask Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Authors

  Copyright

  My hands are trembling as I reach out to touch the ancient Japanese sword. Its curved silver blade glistens under my fingers. I am careful to avoid the razor-sharp edge. I close my eyes and prepare for what comes next. The jolt of electricity through my body. The surge of sounds in my head. The contact with a time long ago.

  My heart beats fast. What will I hear? The shriek of a fifteenth-century samurai warrior as he charges the battlefield? Or the whoosh of the sword being drawn from its wooden sheath? Perhaps a cry of pain as the samurai plunges the blade into his opponent’s flesh?

  I wait. But I hear nothing.

  “I’ll thank you to keep your chubby paws off my precious possessions, Leo. That sword is six hundred years old and worth a small fortune.”

  It’s Uncle Crane standing behind me. I don’t know how he crept into the Sword Room without my hearing him. Usually, the clicking of his expensive Italian loafers on the polished wooden floor announces his presence.

  “Sorry, Uncle Crane, I was just …”

  But he doesn’t wait for my answer, just turns on his heel and leaves. That’s how it is these days. It’s been exactly one month since my parents vanished in a plane crash in Antarctica and my brother and I moved in with him. He swore to take care of us as our father entrusted him to do. But now, we don’t speak except in anger. There is nothing between us but dead air. And my power, my newfound ability to touch objects and hear their past, is also dead.

  It’s been three weeks since we returned from the island, but it feels like forever. Three weeks since my defiance cost Crane the business deal of the century. And in those three weeks, my power to sound bend has all but disappeared.

  Yet somehow, I feel it still lives inside me.

  Waking up in the middle of the night, I can hear a faint echo in my ears. Dream sounds from within my head. A distant drumbeat. A wailing cry. A voice speaking in some ancient language. But then I come fully awake, and the silence returns. When I touch the gleaming Japanese sword or the prehistoric raptor fossil or the rare Martian meteorite, I hear nothing. Just three weeks ago, touching them would have produced a rich soundscape in my mind — the past, alive and calling to me. Now there is nothing.

  Where is my power? Where has it gone?

  I stand in the Sword Room and wonder, surrounded by silence.

  I heard the door to my room click open and slam against the wall.

  “Wake up, Leo! You’re about to be famous.” The voice belonged to my brother, Hollis, and he was sprinting right for me. “The guy on the news said they’d run the story after the commercial. Sit up, bro, and check it out.”

  I rubbed my eyes and rolled over. Things were pretty hazy. It took me a moment to comprehend that I was in my room in Uncle Crane’s penthouse, staring up Hollis’s nostrils as he worked the control panel above my bed like a video game. I knew it was incredibly early because I couldn’t even hear the guys at the salami factory across the street loading up the trucks, and they’re up earlier than roosters.

  “Hollis, what the —”

  Suddenly, the TV came on, the sound of the morning news blaring.

  “Got it,” Hollis said, and jammed himself into my bed, pushing me until I was crammed against the wall. “Pay attention, Leo, or you’re going to miss it.”

  “Miss what?” I asked, but then I recognized the voice on-screen, and suddenly wide awake, I sat straight up. The voice belonged to Dr. Cabot — Becky — from the Center for Human/Dolphin Relations. From the moonlight shining on the deserted beach around her, I could see she was on the South Pacific island of Makuna, where I had helped her find a lost pod of dolphins.

  An ultracaffeinated reporter named Jillian Scotto was shoving a microphone in Becky’s face, grinning into the camera and trying to keep her sculptured hairdo from standing straight up in the tropical winds. Becky was in her usual cut-off jean shorts and golden bikini top, her blond hair blowing free in the breeze.

  “If you’re just joining us,” Jillian said in her smiley voice, “I’ve been talking with Dr. Rebecca Caroll, a researcher at the Center for Human/Dolphin Relations, run by the eccentric Dr. Jay Lylo —”

  “Hey,” Becky cut in. “He’s not eccentric … and that’s Dr. Cabot.”

  “Right. So, Dr. Cabot has been investigating a mysterious pod of dolphins living off this remote island atoll, which, as you can see, still bears the scars of extensive military experiments. These dolphins appear to be related to several dolphins that were used here in a secret Russian military experiment in the 1980s.”

  “They are definitely related,” Becky said firmly. “The dolphins living here are the direct descendants of the dolphins originally used in this experiment. We are trying to rehabilitate them and eventually return them to the open seas. Their parents should have never been used as soldiers.”

  “Dolphin soldiers?” Jillian asked Becky. “Did they carry special dolphin guns?”

  “Come on, Jillian,” Hollis shouted at the TV. “How stupid are you?”

  Becky ignored Jillian’s lame question and continued with her point.

  “As part of this military experiment, the dolphins were forced to wear cybernetic helmets to help detect underwater mines and jam enemy sonar. After the military program ended, they were left here to die. And their descendants, malnourished and orphaned, have been living here ever since. We at the Center for Human/Dolphin Relations are firmly opposed to any nation using or experimenting on dolphins for military purposes.”

  “She did it,” I said, and pumped my fist. “Becky said she was going to get cameras there to show the world what happened to those dolphins, and she really did it. How awesome is that, Hollis?”

  “Very. And you were there, too, bro. You started the whole thing.”

  On-screen, a strong wind came gusting up and blew Jillian’s scarf into her face.

  “Well, it’s certainly a … a … fascinating story, Dr. Cabot,” she said, desperately fighting with the scarf and trying to keep her hairdo together. “At least it’s … different. And let me give you a ‘you go, girl,’ for rocking that bikini!” she added.

  Becky smiled and leaned into the microphone to say thanks, but the story quickly cut to stock footage of dolphins jumping through hoops and splashing around in a theme-park pool. Becky would have hated that.

  “See, Leo?” Hollis said, clearly impressed. “You’re a star. Too bad you can’t take any credit for it. You’d be an instant legend at school.”

  “Yeah,” I said weakly, suddenly aware of this sinking feeling in my chest.

  A close-up of Jillian reappeared on the screen. She had apparently won the battle with her scarf, because now it was fastened neatly around her neck and tied off in a bow.

  “This story actually has its origin in New York City,” she said, pressing her earpiece, “and
now we go live to our on-the-scene reporter Mike Hazel, who’s standing by with his eye-witness report.”

  “Thanks, Jillian,” Mike Hazel said. “I’m reporting to you from this dreary industrial waterfront in north Brooklyn.”

  “Look, Leo!” Hollis screamed, jumping to his feet on my bed and pointing at the TV. “That’s Finkelstein’s salami factory across the street. I bet they’re right outside.”

  “Oh no,” I muttered to myself, and hugged my chest.

  “What do dolphins, Cold War experiments, and Russian spies have in common?” Mike Hazel asked the camera. “This warehouse in Brooklyn for one, where the evidence of a Cold War experiment gone wrong was first uncovered. We’re talking here about a strange, futuristic device, some sort of anti-sonar helmet meant to be worn by dolphins. It was found in one of the crates of the international import-export firm, Crane’s Mysteries, a firm one of my sources has characterized as operating, quote, ‘on the edge of the law.’”

  “Yikes,” Hollis whispered, and squinted at the screen.

  “This is really bad,” I said, my throat tightening.

  I was the one who had discovered that dolphin helmet in Uncle Crane’s warehouse. It was one of my first sound-bending experiences, and when I touched it, I heard the tortured cry of the dolphins. After that, there was no going back. I went all the way across the world to Makuna to uncover its secret. I had to. But I didn’t stop there — I tossed that terrible helmet off a cliff and watched it shatter into a thousand pieces so it would never harm another dolphin again.

  The problem was, I had stolen it from our Uncle Crane, and that little act of bravery had cost him a half-a-million-dollar sale to some of his Russian clients — and started the deep freeze between us.

  “We tried to talk to the firm’s owner, Crane Rathbone, earlier,” Mike said.

  Oh no. This was getting worse. The TV cut to shaky footage from earlier that morning of Mike Hazel pounding on the door to Crane’s Mysteries — the run-down brick warehouse in Brooklyn with its slick and swanky penthouse apartment on the seventh floor. The same penthouse apartment where Hollis and I live, where we were now sitting together in my bed.

  “Mr. Rathbone,” Mike hollered, “this is Mike Hazel from Fox Five news. We just want to get your side of the story. Please open up, Mr. Rathbone.”

  The door opened a crack, and Klevko poked his head out, looking confused and tough. He’s our uncle Crane’s right-hand man who handles all his business, takes all his abuse, and, every now and then, provides a little muscle for Crane’s shady operation.

  “Mr. Rathbone,” Mike said, “would you care to tell us how you happened to get a piece of classified Russian military equipment in your inventory?”

  “Who is Mr. Rathbone?” Klevko said as he stepped outside and noticed the camera. “No Mr. Rathbone here.”

  “Well, then, sir, could you tell us how —”

  Klevko just slid his finger across his neck and grabbed Mike by the collar with one of his beefy hands, while the other reached for the camera, his outstretched palm filling the shot. The camera shook, the footage blacked out, and they cut back to Mike.

  “Wow!” Jillian said, cutting in all the way from her outpost in Makuna. “Looks like they’re not talking. Do we know who first uncovered that dolphin helmet, Mike?”

  “We’re working on that, Jillian. My sources indicate that the helmet may have been found by a thirteen-year-old boy, a native New Yorker by the name of … Leon Loman. We’ve been unable to find this … Leon, yet.”

  I shut off the TV with a shudder. The room was silent for a long moment.

  “Did that just happen?” Hollis asked. “You should at least call and tell them your name is Leo Lomax.”

  “I’m a dead man,” I said, and held my head.

  My phone buzzed on my nightstand. Hollis grabbed it.

  “It’s from Trevor,” he said, reading the text. “He wants to know if you saw the story. What should I tell him?”

  “Nothing. Just turn it off, chief.” I grabbed the phone from him and threw it in my closet.

  I rubbed my eyes and tugged at my hair, but what I really wanted to do was dive under the bed and start tunneling my way out. That story was bad news for me. Crane’s business involved buying and selling rare and ancient artifacts, usually smuggled. He operated in deep secrecy. That’s why we lived in this abandoned part of Brooklyn in this run-down warehouse — so no one would suspect that it housed six floors of priceless goods. Crane was going to explode when he found out that his company had been exposed on the local news.

  And I knew he was going to blame me. He’d been looking for any excuse to nail me. That story gave him more than he needed, even though I’d had nothing to do with it. I had to think of something to tell him, some sort of story, but my brain was like Jell-O. I needed to talk to Trevor, who is not only my best friend, but also has more brain cells than there are stars in the sky. But there was no time. At any moment, Crane would be coming.

  “He’s going to be furious,” Hollis said.

  “No kidding.”

  “What are you going to do, Leo?”

  “Find a spoon and start tunneling out of here.”

  “Wait … you know about the tunnel?” Hollis asked in a whisper.

  I’d meant it as joke, but Hollis wasn’t laughing.

  “You don’t know, do you?” he said. “Listen, Leo, I know a secret way out of here. Get dressed, and I’ll meet you in the hall in thirty seconds. And dress warm, there’s a northeastern storm coming today — you know, one of those mini ice-crystal storms.”

  He’d meant nor’easter, but I didn’t correct him. I could tell he was worried, and I knew what he was worried about. Crane had been threatening to split up Hollis and me, to send me to some terrible tough-love military academy. As long as Hollis and I were together, I could handle tough love.

  But if Crane split us up, we’d both be sunk. We’re all the family we have.

  “I’ll figure this out, Hollis,” I called after him as he left my room. “I won’t let Crane send me away. You and me, chief, we’re stuck together like glue, like Chang and Eng.”

  Hollis glanced back at me briefly, nodded his head, and smiled. “The conjoined twins? Weird, Leo.”

  I got dressed in record time and met Hollis in the hall. We sprinted down the long white corridor that led from our bedrooms into the main rooms of the penthouse, jogging across the glass bridge into the Sword Room, which is actually filled with hundreds of antique swords. When we thought we heard Crane’s footsteps, we ducked behind some cast-iron armor from the Middle Ages, but it was just Klevko’s wife, Olga, already busy waxing the floors. Uncle Crane is obsessively neat, and so poor Olga has to obsessively clean.

  “Hullo, boys,” she said in her thick Polish accent when she saw us creeping by. “I left sweet buns in breakfast room. You go eat. Dmitri, he is there eating buns, too.”

  There was no time for sweets, and Dmitri was the second-to-last person in the world that I wanted to encounter. He’s Klevko and Olga’s son, a strange, sneaky kid the same age as Hollis. Dmitri also works for Crane, and I’m pretty certain that one of his main jobs is spying on me. I don’t trust him one bit.

  We smiled at Olga and scurried across the next glass bridge leading into the Mask Room, which contained totem poles, a full-size dugout canoe suspended with invisible wires from the ceiling, and walls and walls of terrifying masks.

  “Watch this,” Hollis said as we entered the semidark room. He walked up to a particularly monstrous wooden mask, half-human and half-monkey, with a giant dragon tongue snaking out from its menacing face. Clearing his throat, he spoke directly into its open, horrible mouth.

  “My beloved mother, Marie,” he said.

  “You’ve officially lost it, chief,” I whispered.

  “You mean I found it, Leo. Look.”

  He pointed to the white stone wall near the ground. A three-foot-by-three-foot section of it was sliding back to reveal a small dark op
ening into a tunnel. Hollis pointed to a tiny electronic sensor behind the mask’s mouth, blinking red.

  “Voice activated,” he said. “Dmitri told me the password. The kid will do anything for five bucks.”

  “Does it —”

  “Yup. Leads to a secret stairwell. I wonder how Crane can even fit through it.”

  “I don’t,” I answered. “Like all rats, he has a collapsible skeleton.”

  Hollis scrunched up his face and made rat noises. But then I heard footsteps approaching, and I dove for the hole, grabbing Hollis by the collar on the way down.

  As soon as we were both inside, huddling on the dusty floor, the secret opening shut automatically, and we were in total darkness.

  “Motion sensors?” Hollis whispered.

  “Must be,” I answered, and searched my pockets for my phone to use as a flashlight, but in my haste to get out of there, I’d forgotten it in my closet.

  More footsteps approached. They were clicking off the floors, walking slowly toward us. I knew it was Crane in his expensive Italian shoes. No one else’s heels clicked like that. He was probably heading for our rooms.

  “Follow me,” Hollis said, turning on his phone to light up the tunnel.

  I could barely make out Hollis’s shoes in front of me, let alone my surroundings, but we appeared to be in a thin tunnel between the walls. I let my hand slide along the foamy insulation to see if I could channel anything, but no luck. My powers were still dead. I wondered if sound bending was a thing of the past for me. But there was no time to dwell on that — we needed to get to the ground. Stump would be waiting for us in Crane’s black limo, just like every morning. If we could get there before Crane found us, I’d be home free.