Grown in a lab from the finest genetic material, fifteen-year-old Luna has been trained since birth to be the U. Now she has been given an assignment that will test her abilities to the utmost--high school. Posing as an ordinary student at an elite high school, Luna must keep her head down and her grades up while trying to uncover an evil plot. Luna's training has left her completely unprepared to handle the stresses and strains of ordinary teenage relationships--making friends, battling rivals, and having her first big crush on bad boy Jonah, the son of her arch-nemesis, Count Von Brucken!
Making matters worse, Luna's fake father is the overly warm-and-fuzzy Dr. Andy and her so-called mother is the always businesslike, unemotional "Control. The Best Books of Check out the top books of the year on our page Best Books of Product details Format Paperback pages Dimensions x Looking for beautiful books? Visit our Beautiful Books page and find lovely books for kids, photography lovers and more. Other books in this series. Amazing Agent Luna Omnibus: Vol 4 Christina Weir. He sighs and continues the task he was ordered to execute. You need to leave.
With trembling legs I stand and find the courage to look directly at them, though they both refuse to look at me. I back up from the table and, without thinking, open the screen door and walk out into the late-springtime evening. I push and push and push. Finally I reach the top and violently inhale. So many emotions are swirling in my head. Where am I supposed to go? What am I going to do?
Bile rises in my throat. My feet are on autopilot and take me toward my spot, to the bench under the flagpole. I need to sit down before I pass out again. But someone is already there. No one ever comes up to the park, no one I know at least, but in the pink light of the sunset the silhouette looks familiar. Jonathan turns and looks back to me. He has tears streaming down his face. Instantly, my worries seem less substantial. He squeezes my hand and grips it with everything he has, then looks me in the eyes. His are bloodshot and his face, crumpled. I know what happened.
Jonathan, for all of his strength and eagerness to prove it, has a mother who is fighting leukemia. Had a mother who was fighting leukemia. I hold him as he sobs. He cries and cries and his body shakes. His hands dig deep into my back, he clings so hard. When he finally stops, he lets go of me and quietly apologizes. We sit next to each other, hand in hand, and watch as the setting sun bathes the entire valley before us in a golden orangey pink.
Almost like clockwork, the cicadas end their day-long, droning cacophony. We take in the endless trees, the never-ending hills, the infinite sky, all of it. Stars litter the sky, and the moon is heavy and large in the distance. He needed me too much tonight. The living room lights are on. I duck down and, ashamed at feeling like a trespasser in my own home, I listen. The checks stop coming after he graduates next month anyway. You people knew exactly what was going on and you still. Now you just wait a minute!
My head hurts so bad that my vision blurs. I have to get up to my room and just lie down, sleep this off. Sleep off the entire nightmare if I can. Another twist of the knife. I get up and creep around the side of the house, down the little slope to where the garage connects to the basement in the back. A flicker of movement catches my eye in the trees across the way. Just across the road behind the house is a little trail that makes its way up into the woods and into the caves. A little boy would never admit that he was just too scared of the giant, gaping maw in the earth to venture in.
It was like a dark, ancient, abandoned cathedral, and something about the unending stream of cold air pouring out into the woods always seemed to frighten me. I saw something now though, in the trees by the trail. Probably just a fox, or a homeless traveler, who sometimes hop off the myriad trains that come to a crawl through the town at night and make their way into the caves to find shelter. I make my way down around the garage and up the other side of the house to where several small windows peer into the basement, right at ground level.
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I kneel down in the chalky white gravel of the driveway and brace my weight up against the window, trying to slide the rusty frame up. I slide feetfirst into the basement, lowering myself down as best I can. I drop to the floor, dust off my jeans, and come face-to-face with my father.
Well, the man who used to be my father. I can barely make out his face in the darkness, but the bright moon coming in through the windows and the tiny red glow of his cigarette reveal a tired man, exhausted to the very core. I told her to leave the door unlocked, but. I watch him take a long drag from his smoke, the little red ember flaring up in the darkness. For things to turn out this way.
All those years wasted just praying. The moonlight streaming into my room is so bright it makes the walls glow blue. My head throbs and pulses. I am in agony. It has to be close to midnight when I start to hear it.
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Whispers, murmurs, and little buzzes seem to come from everywhere and nowhere all at once. This all has to end. I force my eyes shut, lost in the maelstrom in my head. The waves of pain are so intense that they rock me into nausea. Whispers become shouts, the buzzing growing into a droning howl within.
I hope that as long as I keep my eyes closed it will all go away soon. Eventually I begin to succumb, and drift into the most restless sleep of my life. I hear the floorboards creak down the hall toward my room. Someone is in the house. The footsteps draw closer. The metal of the doorknob clicks. My breath feels hot under the covers, reflecting back toward my face, and my heart is about to beat itself out of my chest. Someone is standing in my room and watching me. It might be stupid, but I have to do something.
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I jump up and rush toward the middle of the room, blankets and all, trying to tackle the intruder. Two legs, strong and muscular, hold me firmly in place. Two solid arms hold my own. I am a helpless sack, subdued with barely any effort whatsoever. Slowly, my captor pulls the blanket down over my face.
The image before me is not what I expect. A young woman—a girl just a few years older than me—straddles me.
Boyishly short platinum-blond hair falls flat across her forehead. A pert mouth and big, wide gray eyes give her the appearance of a pixie. Her black cargo pants and form-fitting black track jacket, the clench of her jaw, and the look of pure fire within her demeanor indicate that this particular pixie can kick some serious ass.
I know she could snap me in two with a mere flick of the wrist. I have no idea how such a small form holds so much power, but here she is, this tiny girl on top of me, holding my life in her hands. She claps a hand over my mouth before I can scream. I refuse to let that happen. The liquid pools of slate, glowing faintly in the blue moonlight, are sincere.
She puts a hand on my chest, holding me back a pace as she leads me down the hall.
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At the end of the hallway we step into the living room, and I catch the silhouette of a man, a big man, passing by the curtained windows. In an instant she has me down the basement stairs. We reach the door that leads into the garage and try to open it silently, but the rusted metal creaks a bit. As we tear through the garage and out into the moonlight, I silently thank my father for always leaving the door open after running contraband whiskey bottles to the dumpster late at night. We dart across the driveway, over the road, into the trees, and start up the tiny, overgrown path.
She thrusts me into the thicket at the edge of the woods, crouches down with me, and turns to observe the house in the dark. People dressed in solid black seem to materialize out of the night and surround the house. They crawl over the roof, sneak into the windows, and make their way around the back to the garage.
Masks cover their faces and they all have guns. A light goes on in a bedroom—their bedroom—and almost as soon as it comes, it goes out with a crash and a blood-curdling scream. The sound is muffled not even a second later, and the night is quiet once more. The knowledge barely sinks in before the girl pulls me up. The men are circling now, and one has spotted footprints leading into the woods. Branches whip our faces, and the ground is littered with football-size chunks of limestone, but neither get in our way.
The sky is clear and bright with stars, and shadows play all across the ground as we charge through the brush—tumbling over rocks, kicking up the white dust of the trail, trying to escape. Then I see it.
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The mouth of the cave. A monolithic chamber of limestone gleaming white in the moonlight, hidden behind the house for so many years. It terrified and mesmerized me throughout my entire childhood, and now a nameless girl leads me into it, away from something that scares me so much more.
We climb over the boulders at the entrance and run down the slope of rocks until we hit cold, white sand. I stop to marvel at having not tumbled down the rocky slope just before a loud, whizzing ping ricochets off the ceiling above me. We run to where the moonlight ends in the main space of the cave. Only jet-black emptiness is before us. She takes hold of my hand and barrels into the dark just as the sound of dozens of feet begin to echo at the entrance.
With my left hand firmly grasped in hers, she takes off into the nothingness just as fast as when I could see. I stumble and trip to keep up with her, yet somehow she is navigating us through the dark with perfect ease. We run for what feels like an eternity. I know that if I stop, even for a moment, the pain throbbing in my head will take me down and leave me vomiting on the cavern floor.
Adrenaline surges me forward. The sand turns to rock once again and slopes upward, while the sound of feet closing in on us still echoes behind. We push up the slope, and I see moonlight coming in again. The exit is just above us, a tiny manhole about eight feet off the ground. There is no way to scale the wall and no way to reach the exit so high above us without a foothold.
The echoes come closer. We are about to run out of time. In a blink the girl leaps straight from the rocky floor to the exit. She throws her legs out of the hole and then slings her torso back down toward me. Without a hint of strain, she lifts me up and out. I tumble over her into the moonlight, down about fifteen feet from an embankment overlooking Osage Street. I clamber down the rocky slope as quickly as I can without falling face-first.
My feet catch hold on the flat pavement of the road as I look up toward the top of the cliff and see the flagpole. I never even knew the cave went that far. It sounds like a death knell. I turn and for a moment I panic, not sure where the girl has gone. My eyes scour the cliffside and the trees. The horn rings through the night once more, closer now. My legs flash beneath me, and my mind peels away everything but the instinct of Left, right, left. The tracks are now just half a block in front of us, cutting over the road, east to west, as we run southward. The approaching train rings out once more.
It is close now. The vehicles barrel down the street toward us, closing in. Left, right, left, right, left. A white-hot flash of pain shoots into the back of my neck as my legs give out. I feel my knees take the brunt of the blow as they hit the pavement, and my face takes the remainder. As my skin slides away, tearing against the rough, dirty pavement, and my lifeless bones press into the ground, I hear the girl shout.
The horn blasts into my ears. The train is here.
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The girl takes a firm stance before my paralyzed body, between it and the two black SUVs that have stopped a few yards away. They leave the headlights on as the doors open and the men climb out. Guns fire all at once. But not normal guns. The shafts are significantly wider, and though I know practically nothing about firearms, I can see that these guns do not shoot bullets, but something much bigger.
A buzz, almost, like an electric sound effect from a cartoon. As each of the massive silvery bullets connects with the blue wall, the light fizzles and crackles and the bullets fall to the ground. I can feel the train hurtling behind us, shaking everything as it roars past. As the men reload, the girl turns to look back at me, and I see her eyes blazing with a bright blue light.
The same color of the electric-blue shield she is wielding. In that brief moment, through the light, I also see regret, sorrow, and a pain welled up so deep within her that I know someday it will consume her. With a flash the veil before us dissolves, and she hurls the glass orb at one of the vehicles.
It crashes into the windshield and cracks open. The orb is filled with a sticky, clear goo that clings to the window, letting off a soft purple glow. Before I can process what is happening, she raises her hands and the veil of electric light appears once more, except this time as a dome around the men and their giant vehicles. Without warning, a massive explosion erupts from within the blue dome. A raging hellfire that barely rattles the ground below and makes no other sound or vibration besides.
It is completely trapped inside the dome—a nightmarish snow globe filled with a churning fire. The fire goes out almost as quickly as it erupted. The dome flicks out of existence, and the girl bends down to me. I can see that her eyes no longer glow as she almost effortlessly picks me up from the ground, slings me over her shoulder, and runs toward the train.
Before I can make out what is happening, the girl is beside me, leaning up against a rusty wall behind her, face drenched in moonlight, hair whipping in the wind. I can see it clearly now: All I see is black metal and an open side panel where she sits. For several moments she stares out into the night and takes in the landscape flying by, lost in thought.
Had she saved me?