Evil Star

Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star Matt thought his troubles were over when he closed Raven's Gate... but, in fact, they were just beginning. Evil forces will stop at nothing to track him down and destroy him.
    There's no choice but to fight back.
    Matt's fate - and the fate of the world - is tied to four other kids across the globe. The second is a Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star street kid in Peru. He and Matt have never met; they don't even speak the same language. But destiny is going to throw them together as the threat of the Old Ones grows, a strange and insidious villain beckons, and another Gate suddenly comes into play....

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    The old man's eyes burned red, reflecting the last flames of the
    fire. The sun had already begun to set behind the mountains, and
    the shadows were closing in. Far away, a huge bird — a condor —
    wheeled round in a lazy circle before plunging back down to earth.
    And then everything was still. The night was just a breath away.
    "He will come, " the old man said. He spoke in a strange lan-
    guage, known to very few people in the world. "We have no need
    to send for him. He will come anyway. "
    Supporting himself on a walking stick carved from the branch of a
    tree, he got to his feet and made his way to the edge of the stone
    terrace where he had been sitting. From here he could look down
    into a canyon that seemed to fall away forever, a fault line in the
    planet that had given way perhaps a million years ago. For a min-
    ute he was silent. There were a dozen men behind him, waiting for
    him to speak. None of them dared interrupt him while he stood
    there, deep in thought.
    At last he turned back.
    "The boy is on the other side of the world," he said. "He is
    fourteen years old."
    One of the men stirred uneasily. He knew it was wrong to ask
    questions, but he couldn't stop himself. "Are we just going to wait

    Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star
    for him?" he demanded. "We have so little time. And even if he
    does come, how can he help us? A child!"

    "You don't understand, A toe," the old man replied. If he was
    angry, he didn't show it. He knew that Atoc was only twenty years
    old, barely more than a child himself, at least in the elder's mind.
    "The boy has power. He still has no idea who he is or how strong
    he has become. He will come here and he will arrive in time. His
    power will bring him to us."
    "Who is this boy?"someone else asked.
    The old man looked again at the sun. It seemed to be sitting,
    perfectly balanced, on the highest mountain peak. The mountain
    was called Mandango . . . the Sleeping God.
    "His name is Matthew Freeman," he said. "He is one of the five."

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    Chapter 1 Big Wheel
    There was something wrong about the house in Eastfield Terrace.
    Something unpleasant.
    All the houses on the street were more or less identical: red brick, Victorian, with two bedrooms on the first floor and a bay window on either the left or the right of the front door. Some had satellite dishes. Some had window boxes filled with brightly colored flowers.
    But looking down from the top of the hill, one house stood out immediately. Num-ber twenty-seven no longer belonged there. It was as if it had caught some sort of disease and needed to be taken away.

    Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star The front garden was full of junk and the garbage can beside the gate was overflowing, surrounded by plastic gar-bage bags that the owners had been unable to stuff inside. This wasn't uncommon in Eastfield Terrace. The net cur-tains were permanently drawn across the front windows and, as far as anyone could tell, the lights were never turned on. But even this wasn't particularly strange. What was unusual was the way the house smelled. For weeks now, there had been a rotten, sewage smell that seemed at first to be coming from a blocked pipe but which had rapidly gotten worse until people had begun to cross the street to avoid it. Whatever was causing it seemed to be affecting the entire place. The grass on the front lawn was beginning to die. The flowers had wilted and then been choked up by weeds. The color seemed to be draining out of the very bricks.
    The neighbors had tried to complain. They had knocked on the front door, but nobody had come. They had tele-phoned, but nobody had answered. Finally, the borough council at the Ipswich Civic Center had been called . . .