Free Fire And Steel (The Merryweather Chronicles Book 2) by Lesley Woodral Page A

rolled onto their backs, holding their arms around their heads and bellowing in pain. Brandon looked at the two of them for a moment before turning to look for Albert. But Albert was nowhere to be found. He must've run away when the fight started. Brandon didn't blame him, though. That was what he'd told him to do whenever the Kruegers were involved.
          Brandon left the Kruegers on the floor, leaving the gym and heading for class. He spared a thought for the Krueger's father and his warning from before, but wasn't really worried about it. The big man had seemed like just as big a bully as his sons and was probably just as cowardly. He wouldn't do anything but bluff and bluster, Brandon was fairly certain. He put the big man and his twin sons from his mind and focused on getting to class.
     
          It was lunchtime before Brandon saw Claire. She was waiting at the cafeteria entrance when Brandon got there, dressed in a light blue sweater and jeans. Her eye patch was pink, a round eye staring wide from the center. She smiled when she saw Brandon coming, but her smile slipped away when she saw the expression on his face. She said, stepping forward to take his hand. "I was going to tease you for being late this morning, but you look like it was something bad. What happened?"
          "Nothing important." Brandon said, shaking his head and giving Claire's hand a squeeze. "Have you seen Albert?"
          "He went into the cafeteria a few minutes ago." She looked at him, her single green eye curious and worried. "Have the Kruegers been bothering him again?"
          Brandon didn't say anything. He was watching the street that ran the length of the cafeteria. The street was normally closed during school hours, but a black SUV had gone around the arm blocking the street and cruised slowly past the cafeteria. Brandon watched it go by, cutting around the high school parking lot, and felt a momentary sense of disquiet.
          Claire must've sensed his unease, because she said. "Creepy, right? Dad says it's just a team of State Police with one FBI guy helping them out, but it's still spooky."
          "I know what you mean." Brandon said. They went inside, both trying to forget the black car and what it meant. Brandon couldn't help but think of Phillip and strange incident in the boy's storm cellar. He wondered if the other missing children had been investigating the sound of some poor trapped animal when they went missing? He hoped they hadn't suffered, but he couldn't really fool himself into believing that the grohlm treated children any different than they treated men. He'd seen what they did to the men in his vision and he shuddered to think that they did the same to children.
          In the cafeteria, Brandon and Claire got their food and found a spot off to themselves. Brandon saw Albert across the large room, looking in his direction. The boy saw Brandon looking and dropped his face into his plate, going red. If his arm was hurting him, he didn't show it. Brandon decided that his ears were playing tricks on him when he thought he heard the bone snap. Albert was probably ashamed that he ran, instead of staying to help Brandon. But Brandon didn't blame him. He was glad that Albert had run away, actually. It made it easier for Brandon to fight if he didn't have to worry about somebody besides himself getting hurt.
          When they sat down, Claire leaned over and said. "So, have you decided what we're going to dress up as?  For the Halloween dance, I mean?"
          Brandon blinked at her. "I figured they were going to cancel it, because of the disappearances?"
          Claire shook her head. "No. They're going to go ahead and have it. Some of the parents wanted to cancel, but Mr. Marcus talked them onto going ahead. He said that with all the bad things going on around us, we needed some sort of normalcy, even if it was just a school dance. They're just going to make sure that there are