In the Shadow of the Dragon King Read Online Free Page A

victory.”
    David ignored the quip and crept forward. With a deep breath, he flung open the doors.
    A patch of rust-brown corduroy sailed over the railing. Footsteps pounded the porch below.
    “Whoa! Did you see that? He just jumped!” David ran back inside, scrambled over his bed and out his bedroom door.
    “Who did?” Charlotte asked, following behind.
    “I don’t know. Some short little dude.”
    David barreled down the stairs and out the front door, Charlotte on his heels.
    “There!” she said. “Darting between the trees!”
    David took off down the long drive, the cold air stinging his cheeks and burning his throat. The stout figure, no more than three feet tall, ran faster, his shape blurring with the surroundings.
    “He’s getting away,” Charlotte said a few feet behind David.
    David willed his legs to go faster. Up ahead, the trespasser turned sideways and slipped through the narrow bars of the gate without slowing down.
    “What the—” David skidded to a stop and typed in the security code on the control box. The motor engaged. The giant scrolling black rails churned open.
    He blew into his freezing hands. “Come on, damn it. A sloth moves faster than this.”
    Ten. Eleven. Twelve seconds passed before David slipped through the opening and onto the cul-de-sac. His breath hung in plumes above his head. Two houses down, old lady Fenton, a spidery old woman with crooked fingers and waist-length strands of silver hair as fine as mist, shuffled back to her house with a newspaper tucked under her arm. There was no sign of the mysterious stranger.
    Charlotte jogged up behind him breathing hard. “Where did he go?”
    “I don’t know.” David bent over, his hands on his knees. “I’ve never seen anything move that fast in my life. And how did he—I mean—did you see him pass through the rails? It’s like he morphed or something . ”
    “Impossible,” Charlotte said.
    “What? Didn’t you see it?”
    “Yes, but there has to be—”
    A limb in the giant oak tree above them groaned. David turned his face skyward as the branch splintered.
    “Get out of the way!” He shoved Charlotte into his neighbor’s yard, slipped on a patch of ice, and hit the sidewalk with a thud.
    “Ouch!”
    The wood missile plummeted toward the ground.
    “David, look out!”
    He rolled out of the way just as the limb hit the pavement.
    David swallowed, hard. His heart beat like a jackhammer.
    “Holy crap!” He stood and brushed the snow off his jeans.
    Deep laughter boomed from his left. “Sidewalk slide out from beneath you there, son?”
    Mr. Loudermilk from next door stood on the stoop of his house, his mouth twisted in a sadistic grin.
    Very funny, you nutter . David dusted himself off, frowning at the lanky old man’s brown plaid pants and purple striped shirt. His white hair was wilder than usual, standing on end like he’d rubbed his head with a hundred inflated latex balloons. His gaze fixed on David like a buzzard’s to fresh road kill. David’s insides gnarled. How the real-life Indiana Jones archeologist turned history teacher had turned into such a fruitcake he’d never know. It was if a switch turned off in his head toward the end of August and never turned back on.
    Whatever. It didn’t matter, so long as Mr. Loudermilk stayed on his side of the hedges, everything would be right with the world.
    David stood and pulled Charlotte up. “You okay? No bones broken?”
    She glanced up at the tree, then back down to the remnant blocking the sidewalk. “I don’t know about you, but that was a little too close for me.”
    “No kidding.”
    Out of the corner of his eye, a red flash caught David’s attention. The small figure darted across the lawn and around the backside of his house. “Holy crap, he’s in my yard!”
    David and Charlotte bolted over the limb and ran up the drive.
    “Geez, how does he move so fast?” Charlotte said.
    “I don’t know, but it’s getting away. Let’s