The Threat Page 3

  We hung up. We both knew. David was missing and I was on my way, as soon as I could get away safely. I'd be "at the usual place."

  Twenty minutes later Tom came to check on

  34 me. I was in my bed. Asleep. Or at least I looked asleep. I lay there in the dark, listening. Then I heard the faint sound of the front door opening and closing.

  Tom was leaving. Yeerk business, no doubt.

  "Yeerks make lousy baby-sitters," I muttered under my breath.

  I morphed to brown bat and flew out of my open window. Bats aren't the fastest flyers in the world, but it was a moonless night, and I didn't want to risk running into power lines or anything that would be invisible.

  I found Cassie and Rachel at the barn. It was a bit creepy at night. The lights were kept very low. Just enough to make out the rows of wire cages and to see vague shapes pacing or standing or snoring within.

  Cassie looked worried. Rachel, as always, looked great. I demorphed and stood there, barefoot and shivering in bike shorts and T-shirt.

  "Hey, Rachel. You must have morphed to get here so fast," I said. "So how come you have regular clothes on?"

  Cassie rolled her eyes. "Didn't you know? Rachel keeps a couple of outfits here at the barn."

  "Is it a crime to want to look good?" Rachel asked self-mockingly.

  "Good grief," I said. "So what's the deal?"

  36 "The deal is, David went to sleep up in the loft around nine. Early. Said he was tired. I checked on him. At ten I remembered that I forgot to give that deer with the bullet wound her meds, so I came back out. No David."

  35

  Did you try and reach Marco?"

  Cassie nodded. "He can't come. His dad's out on a date, and when he comes back he's sure to check on Marco."

  "I guess the question is: How did David leave here? On foot or on the wing?"

  "The other question is why?" Rachel pointed out. "And where did he go? And while we're at it, doesn't he realize he's destroying my sleep with this stupid game?"

  "Okay, look, you two have your owl morphs. One of you go and look for Ax and Tobias. They can help. I'll go to wolf morph, see if he left a scent trail. No, wait. What if someone sees me? Better do Homer."

  37 Homer is my dog.

  "I'll go for Tobias," Rachel said. "And Ax."

  I was alread y morphing. Already feeling the long, shaggy fur sprouting from my hands and arms and chest.

  "Urn, Jake? You can't morph to dog in here. You know how dogs get around animals," Cassie warned.

  "Oh. Yeah." I smiled with what was left of my human mouth. I had morphed Homer several times before. And it wasn't that his dog instincts were so overpowering or anything. It's just that he had a secret weapon for undermining my self-control: He was happy. As in HAPPY! And a dog surrounded by scared rodents and skunks and raccoons was just about as HAPPY as a living creature could be.

  It's hard to resist happiness. It tends to kind of carry you away.

  I opened the big, creaking barn door and went back outside. Hobbled, because my legs were bending and shrinking and my feet were already more like paws. Cassie followed.

  Still no moon out. Clouds obscured the stars. It was as black as night gets. The only light came from the faint, distant porch lights from the nearest subdivision. And a light someone had left on in Cassie's house.

  I finished morphing Homer. I felt my face

  38 bulge out and out. I felt the teeth multiply and grow in my mouth. I felt my ears crawling up the side of my head.

  My legs bent and shrank till I fell forward onto pads that had replaced my palms. My tail wagged. And I felt that amazing rush of giddy, idiot, dog happiness.

  What had I been so worried about? It was nighttime, I was free, I could clearly hear some small animal scurrying over behind the bushes, I wasn't especially hungry. Life was great!

  I looked expectantly at Cassie. Did she want to play? I crouched low in front, making the signal of an invitation to dog play.

  Fortunately, Cassie had enough sense to decline.

  "No, thank you," she said. "I don't think we're hereto play."

  We weren't?

  Oh, right. We weren't.

  But, hey! What was that smell? Was that . . . yes! It was dog poop! Not my poop. But definitely dog poop!

  Where? I sniffed. Okay, over there. I trotted toward the source of the smell. Hmmm. Not fresh. This was old dog poop. At least a couple of days old.

  That didn't mean it was totally useless. But fresh dog poop was really far more interesting.

  39 Stale dog poop was only slightly more interesting than cat poop. And let's face it: No one cares about cat poop.

  "I think we kind of have to focus, Jake," Cassie said as firmly as she could.

  «What? Oh, yeah. I was just . . . you know, investigating^

  "Uh-huh."

  "We need your nose, but not for that."

  «Yeah, okay. Back to business.» I focused on the job at hand. Or I tried, at least. I mean, I sounded serious for Cassie's sake, but come on, what was there to be all grim about?

  Life was a party!

  "By the way, I meant to tell you I have an idea for how we can break into the resort. It's a morph that-"

  «Wait a minute. Is this idea going to make me feel better or just creep me out?» I interrupted.

  Cassie laughed. "Maybe we should talk about it later. Here." She handed me a T-shirt. "It's the shirt David wore yesterday."

  I sniffed it once. No more was needed. Because I knew right away that David had in fact walked away from the barn. His trail might as well have been marked with orange traffic cones.

  This wasn't as fun as chasing a stick. But it was some kind of game, at least. And I liked Cassie.

  If only she had a stick.

  40 J. followed David's scent as Cassie floated in absolute silence overhead. Her owl's wings made no sound. Not even to my ears.

  «He stopped here,» I said. We were a thousand yards from the barn in the middle of a field. «He morphed. I'm getting a new scent.»

  I sniffed carefully at the ground, going around in a circle. «The idiot!» I yelled, suddenly too angry to be dog HAPPY. «He went into that lion morph you hooked him up with.»

  «Maybe he just wanted to try it out,» Cassie said. «We all used to do things like that.»

  «Yeah,» I agreed. «But a lion? This close to people's homes?»

  41 «l seem to remember you morphing to tiger and running around on people's roofs, Jake.»

  «0h. Yeah.»

  I followed the lion scent. We headed across the fields of Cassie's farm and plunged into woods. Cassie kept pace effortlessly. And after a while a second silent owl and a much noisier hawk caught up to us.

  «l couldn't find Ax,» Rachel said. «But Tobias is here.»

  «Yeah, lucky me,» Tobias grumbled.

  We emerged again from the woods, and now we were close to a major road. On the far side it was a built-up strip: Taco Bell, Mickey D's, a tire place, a couple of gas stations, and a Holiday Inn.

  I sniffed the ground again. «He demorphed here.» I trotted forward closer to the road, closer to the cars blazing past at sixty miles an hour. «Here he morphed again. The golden eagle.»

  I took a deep breath. I had a bad feeling about this. I began to demorph. I wanted to be able to look around as a human to see what David had seen.

  Human once more, and not at all HAPPY, I looked up and down the street. "So. Maybe he just came to snag some food. Maybe he was hungry."

  42 «l left him some chips up in the loft,» Cassie said.

  "Maybe he had a craving for a Big Mac. Cassie, did he say anything to you tonight?"

  «He was complaining about missing his old room. His pet snake. His stuff. TV.»

  I nodded. "Yep. TV." I pointed at the Holiday Inn. "Cassie, Tobias, Rachel? Go take a look. I'll be right there."

  Ten minutes later, I was in the carpeted hall of the Holiday Inn. I knocked at the door number "2135." I could hear the television ins
ide. Then the TV went silent.

  "David, it's me, Jake. I know you're in there."

  The door opened. David was wearing sweatpants and a T-shirt. It was stuff I'd loaned him. Obviously, he'd taught himself to morph clothing like the rest of us.

  I didn't wait to be invited. I stepped inside. The TV was still on, but muted.

  "What, exactly, are you doing here?" I demanded, not very calmly.

  David shrugged. "Hanging out. Watching some tube. Sleeping in a normal bed. What's that, a crime?"

  "Yeah, it is a crime," I said. "You didn't pay for this room."

  "It was empty. So what?"

  43 I pointed at the broken window we'd spotted from outside. "You broke a window to get in."

  David smirked. "Hey, a bird broke a window, okay? A bird used a rock to dive-bomb the glass. Is that a crime? I don't think so. Officer, arrest that eagle? That's not happening."

  "You're not talking to someone who doesn't know what's what, okay? The eagle morph is just a body and basic instincts. The mind is yours. Eagles don't bust into Holiday Inns. That was you."

  David flopped back onto the bed and picked up the remote control. He started flipping channels, ignoring me.

  "Listen, David, we don't break laws. Not unless absolutely necessary. We don't hurt innocent people. We have to control how we behave. We're not a bunch of criminals. Like on the beach when we needed clothing? I already mailed the money to the shop. Are you going to do that here?"

  David stopped channel surfing. "How's it end for me, Jake?" he asked. "I have no home, all right? My family wants to turn me over to the Yeerks. What am I supposed to do? Keep living in that barn? It's easy for you, Jake. You have a family. You have a home. You all have homes. You all sleep in beds at night and watch TV and eat at a table."

  44 "Not all of us," I said. "Not Tobias. Not Ax."

  "Ax isn't even human. Neither is Tobias. I am. I'm human, like you and Marco and Cassie and Rachel, and all of you have homes. All of you can walk around the mall without having every Controller around come down on you."

  "It's a bad situation," I said. "It stinks."

  "Yeah. And what are you going to do about it, Jake?"

  "I ... look, we can only handle so many things at once, okay? Right now the leaders of the most powerful nations on Earth are being targeted by the Yeerks. I feel the clock ticking. I know your life sucks, okay? But I can't figure that out right now. Later. After this mission is over."

  David gave me a look that was pure cynicism. "Yeah. Right. Well, how about this, Jake? I'll handle my life. You be the big boss of the Ani-morphs, and I'll take care of me."

  An answer to David's challenge had formed in my mind. The words were right there. But they were harsh. And if I spoke them, I'd cross a line with David. A line I might not be able to uncross.

  "It's like school and home, okay?" David continued. "It's like being an Animorph is school, and you're the teacher or the principal or whatever. But then, after I go home, you don't tell me what to do anymore."

  I shook my head. "No, that's not what it's

  45 like, David. I don't want to come down on you, but the way it is is like this: You want to go around using your powers in selfish ways, then we can't have you around. You're just a danger to us. And you're against what we stand for."

  His eyes widened. He rolled off the bed and stood up. "Are you threatening me?"

  "No. Just telling you the way it is. We're the only family you have now, David. The only people you can trust. The only people who can help you. We're all you have. Deal with it."

  He shot me a sullen, resentful look. I couldn't blame him. I sounded like someone's father saying, "As long as you live in my house, you'll follow my rules." I sounded like I was threatening him.

  I was.

  "Let's go," I said.

  We went.

  46 Cassie had said she had an idea for getting past the security at the resort. She'd also admitted it would creep me out.

  And, as always, she was honest.

  It was the next day. We actually had to skip school. Marco, Rachel, Cassie, and me. It was something we'd never done all together before. It was risky. We couldn't have people noticing the fact that we were out of school together.

  But the situation was desperate.

  We were not in the barn. Cassie's father would be working there during the day. We were in the woods near Tobias's meadow.

  "See, the problem is, anything bigger than a bug is going to be noticed by the Controllers who

  47 are in the security teams," Cassie explained. "But all the insect morphs we have are wrong for this job. Too much distance to cover for a cockroach. Same thing with a fly or an ant. Too much distance with senses that are not much good at dealing with faraway objects."

  "Uh-huh," Marco said, nodding grimly. "And so what have you come up with, I hesitate to ask?"

  She removed a glass jar from her backpack and held it out for us to see. Inside it was a large, brilliant green insect with two sets of wings.

  "What is that, a dragonfly?" David asked.

  "Yeah. Dragonfly," Cassie confirmed. "Look closely and you'll notice the eyes. They are huge, relative to the size of the body. They completely cover the dragonfly's head."

  "No way," David said.

  Cassie ignored him. "The housefly morphs we have feed on garbage, carrion, so on. So their sense of sight doesn't have to be great. But drag-onflies eat other flying insects. They snag mosquitoes right out of the air. And since we know they don't have echolocation like bats have, they must be using the sense of sight to hunt."

  "Wait a minute," David said. "When we became cockroaches we almost got stomped!"

  "Seven dragonflies all flying in there together?" Marco said skeptically. "What happens

  48 if the Controllers realize there's this sudden plague of dragonflies?"

  Cassie winced. "Well, I thought of that. So, see, only one person would morph the dragonfly. That person would get inside, find a place for the rest of us to demorph, and then morph something else to go spying around."

  «l'm not understanding this,» Ax said. «How will the rest of us get inside with this single drag-onfly?»

  "Well . . ." Cassie said. "That's the part that is either beautiful or gross, depending on your point of view."

  "Oh, I so don't want to hear this," Marco moaned.

  "See, the dragonfly is so big, and such a powerful flyer, he can carry passengers."

  We all considered that for a moment. All of us staring at Cassie.

  «What kind of passengers, Cassie?» Tobias asked.

  "Well ... I think you could get six fleas lined up on -"

  "Okay, okay, that's not happening," David said.

  "One of us morphs a dragonfly, the rest of us morph fleas and climb on board like we're flying Delta?" Rachel demanded. "How would we even

  49 hold on? It'll be like being on a jet. On the outside of a jet!"

  Cassie grinned. "Oh, the holding on part is easy. Fleas are excellent grippers. Besides, for extra safety, you just have to bite the dragonfly and not let go."

  Once again we all stared at Cassie.

  "You're a very disturbing person sometimes, Cassie," Marco said.

  Rachel sighed. "Who's the lucky dragonfly who gets to have six fleas attached to him or her?"

  "We can draw straws," I said.

  "Wait a minute, we're doing this?" David cried. "Are you nuts?"

  Marco pointed at David and said, "For once, I'm with him."

  I bent over and plucked a handful of pine needles from the ground. I counted seven and broke one short. "Short needle morphs the dragonfly."

  50 I drew the short straw. So I was the one to stick my fingers into the jar and touch the dragonfly.

  He seemed to be built of three elements: helicopter wings, gigantic eyes, and a ridiculously long blue-green tail. Actually the abdomen, but it looked like a stiff tail.

  Cassie had also brought a flea for those who'd never morphed a flea. The plan
was for me to morph the dragonfly, the others except for Tobias to morph the flea, and then Tobias would fly us all close to the resort and release us.

  Easier said than done.

  "This can't even be possible," David said. "I

  51 mean, a flea? Look how big we are! The flea is like . . . like a grain of sand."

  «lt is possible,» Ax said. «The extra mass is extruded into Zero-space. Our own minds and brains are pushed into Zero-space and maintain contact with the morph by means of a -»

  "What is he talking about?" David asked.

  Rachel shrugged. "We don't have any idea. But he's right: It works. So just relax with it."

  "I'm going to become a flea and I should just relax. A flea!"

  He looked from one of us to the next, I guess waiting to see if it was all some big joke.

  "I'm ready," I said. I took a deep breath and began the morph.

  Every morph is different. And no morph ever makes logical sense. It's not like everything changes at once. It's not like if you're morphing a tiny insect you're going to start off with tiny insect legs. That would be gross enough. The reality is so much grosser.

  See, in reality you might morph an ant and suddenly have these gigantic ant legs that then begin to shrink. Or you might be morphing an elephant and start off with this three-inch-long trunk.

  So not only is morphing weird and illogical. It can be weird in different ways for different

  52 people. And it can be weirder one time than the next.

  I have morphed many, many times. If I morph another ten thousand times, I will still never, never get used to it.

  I focused on the dragonfly with a fair amount of fear. I closed my eyes and began to change. Then, quite suddenly, my eyes were open again.

  Only I hadn't opened them. I just didn't happen to have eyelids anymore. And my eyes . . .

  "Oh. Oh, no," Cassie said in disgust. "Oh. Oh,guh."

  "Man, I didn't need to see that," Rachel agreed.

  "Okay, now that is gross," Marco said. "That is seriously gross."

  The first things that had morphed were my eyes. I was standing there, big as my normal self, normal everywhere. Except for the fact that my entire head - everything but my mouth - was covered with two monstrous, bulging, iridescent insect eyeballs.