Gregor and the Prophecy of Bane - 2 Read Free Page B

flashlight. Dad, I've got to go now."

    "I know, son. Gregor...I love you." His dad's voice was shaking. "Be careful, okay?"

    "I will be. Love you, too. I'll see you soon, okay?" said Gregor.

    "See you soon," his dad whispered hoarsely.

    And then Gregor lowered himself down into the hole. He stuck the phone in one pocket and pulled out his key ring from another. When he clicked on the little flashlight, he was surprised by the amount of light it produced. He slid the rock slab closed and started down a long, steep flight of steps.

    As he got to the bottom he stopped and closed his eyes for a minute, trying to re-create in his head the path that had brought him here last summer. They had been flying then, on the back of a big black bat named Ares, who was his bond. In the Underland, a human and a bat could take a vow and swear always to protect each other no matter how desperate the situation. Then the two were called bonds.

    Ares had flown Gregor, Boots, and his dad back from the Underland and left them at the foot of the stairs and headed off to the...right! Gregor was pretty sure it had been to the right, so he started running that way.

    The tunnel was cold and dank and desolate. It had been made by people — regular people, not the violet-eyed, pale Underlanders he had met deep in the earth — but Gregor felt sure that it had been forgotten by New Yorkers long ago.

    His flashlight beam caught a mouse, and it skittered away in terror. Light didn't come down here. People didn't come down here. What was be doing down here?

    "I can't believe it," thought Gregor. "I can't believe I have to go back down - there! " Back into the strange dark land of giant roaches and spiders and, worst of all, rats! The thought of seeing one of those six-foot sneering, fanged creatures filled him with dread.

    Boy, his mom was not going to like this.

    Last summer, when they'd finally come home late one night, she'd freaked out. First her two missing kids show up with their missing dad, who can barely walk, and then they all sit down and tell her some bizarre story about a land miles under the earth.

    Gregor could tell she didn't believe them at first. Well, who would? But it was Boots's chatter that she couldn't ignore.

    "Beeg bugs, Mama! I like beeg bugs! We go ride!" Boots had said, happily bouncing on her mother's lap. "I ride bat. Ge-go ride bat."

    "Did you see a rat, baby?" her mom said softly.

    "Rat bad," Boots said with a frown. And Gregor remembered this was the exact phrase he had heard the roaches use to describe the rats. They were bad. Very bad. Well, most of them...

    They'd told the story three times, under intense questioning from his mom. They'd showed her their strange Underland clothing woven by the huge spiders that lived there. Then there was his dad, white-haired, shaking, emaciated.

    At dawn, she'd decided to believe them. At one minute after dawn, she was down in the laundry room nailing, screwing, gluing, doing everything she could to seal shut the grate they'd all fallen through. She and Gregor shoved a dryer closer to it. Not enough so it would draw a lot of attention. But enough so that no one could get back there and open it up.

    Then she put the laundry room off-limits. No one was allowed down there, ever. So, once a week Gregor helped her haul the laundry three blocks to use a Laundromat.

    But his mom hadn't thought about this entrance in Central Park. And neither had he. Until now.

    The tunnel came to a fork. He hesitated a minute, and then headed off to the left, hoping it was the right direction. As he jogged along, the tunnel began to change. The bricks left off, and natural stone walls took over.

    Gregor went down one last flight of steps. This one was carved out of natural stone. It looked really old. He guessed it must have been made by the Underlanders hundreds of years earlier, when they'd begun their descent to make a new world deep in the earth.

    The tunnels began to twist and turn, and