Coyle and Fang: Curse of Shadows (Coyle and Fang Adventure Series Book 1) by Robert III (best books for 7th graders .txt) 📕

Coyle’s breath shrank away to nothing, her shoes slipping backward, away from the mortal dangers and creeping tendrils of the eerie. She glanced outside. She made out shapes of horseback riders in the distance. Three armed men in all the daylight. She glanced at the front door.

“Coyle?” Poes asked, and she turned to him.

Terror crossed her face.

“The dark isn’t one of your favorite colors, is it?” Poes smiled and offered his hand. She looked outside but reached for his hand, grasping it tightly. He was the anchor amidst the rising storm in her soul.

***

Over fifty yards away, Sergeant Tanner was joking with his perimeter patrol when someone caught his attention.

“Say, who’s that?” he asked.

“Where, Sarge?” one of them asked.

“Looks like a female over there,” he answered. “Kinda looks like that pretty lady who arrived earlier... What was her name?”

“Miss Coyle, Sarge.”

“And how did Miss Coyle end up over here? I thought I told her to stay around the residences.”

“I don’t know, Sarge.”

“I have no idea why Captain Sievers allows citizens on this property, but if they looked this nice, well I’d let them come all day.”

“Sir, she’s getting within hearing range.”

She walked up to them and squinted in the sun.

“Miss Coyle?” asked Sergeant Tanner. “How in the world did you get away from your group?” He looked behind him and then at her.

“Yes, silly me. I got bored and went looking at the sights.” Veiul’s eyes narrowed at the soldiers. “Can you point me in the direction of my friends? I seem to have gotten a little lost.”

Chapter 11

Coyle counted the steps to keep her mind busy. Logic, prayers and anything useful were washed away in the midst of gnawing panic, but she had to grasp onto what was real and the grated metal beneath her boots fit the bill. She focused on Vonteg’s tiny light, trying hard to remember Scripture about the light of God and trying harder not to imagine what was waiting in the horrible dark.

She counted two landings and two more flights of steps. Sixteen for each flight, thirty-two total. She barely felt Poes’s hand in hers, but she was thankful she wasn’t alone. The doctors said it was nyctophobia, a severe fear of the dark. But she knew it was all in her mind. The same mind where thousands of possibilities spun into compelling deductions and applicable calculations. The same mind that hid sinister fears in the spaces between logic and reason. When triggered, these fears grew chaotic, and she spun out of control like she was sliding on an icy lake toward an open hole to nowhere.

She breathed in through her nose, out through her mouth. In and out. Counting the steps one by one until they stopped at a wide, flat landing.

“This is the floor level,” Vonteg said, and stepped to the side. “There’s got to be a switch here somewhere.”

Coyle winced at a loud snap, and electric lights flickered. Most of them stayed on. She released herself from Poes’s grasp, nodded to him, and stopped chewing her bottom lip. She shook the nervousness from her hands and took notice of her new surroundings.

They were in a wide hall with rooms and hallways veering off in every direction. It smelled of damp earth and seawater. Large, rough-hewn timber logs braced the ceiling and corners.

“This was made during the Civil War,” Vonteg said, tapping a log. “Union soldiers cut their timber like this for their fortifications.”

“What would the purpose of this place be?” Coyle’s voice cracked.

“Reckon we’ll find out,” Vonteg said. “The lights should hold. Good thing Edison picked San Francisco to introduce his electric lights. Looks like the Union took advantage of it, like they did everything else.”

“There are a lot of rooms,” Poes said. “As long as there are lights, it may be a good idea for us to separate. We can cover more area. Sound good?” He looked at Coyle, and she nodded without thinking it through. She shivered and picked a room.

Coyle found herself in a workshop. Perfect. She would use discovery as a distraction from the fact that she was holed up in an underground tunnel system built twenty years ago.

A large table rested in the center, papers scattered across its surface. Large scrolls lay strewn and stacked throughout the small room. She took a deep breath and busied herself by unrolling them one by one. They were all blueprints of airships. None she recognized. But she logged each of the ships’ names into her mind for future use. She searched through other papers: memos, notes, journals. The lights flicked off.

God, no!

Adrenaline rushed through her, and panic flickered through her mind. She gripped the papers, and the lights flickered back to life. Breath escaped her lips, and her damp, trembling hands smoothed out the papers. She looked around the room again. Two cabinets stood next to each other. She pulled out the drawers. There were loads of files, all filled with notes of machines and devices. She tried to keep an eye out for names and locations, but nothing was useful. She looked down at the blueprints again before she left the room and walked down the hall to the next room.

Poes sat on the floor, silent, examining a picture. Coyle glanced over his shoulder. It was a portrait of a young girl and a smiling man with kind eyes. The girl was about ten years old with thin, pale, dark hair and a pretty face. Her eyes looked drawn, heavy, as if she had just finished crying. Coyle stepped in the room, making Poes shift.

“That’s not Trevin, is it?” Coyle asked.

Poes dragged his finger across the picture. He shook his head and stared for a few moments before answering. “I haven’t seen... I don’t know who they are.”

“Do they remind you of anyone?” Coyle asked. She noticed Poes’s eyes no longer held the hard edge but were instead soft, deep in thought.

“I have a relative I haven’t seen in so long. A niece.”

“Is there anything on the back?