otherwise. Krom was there, from their first adventure, as the new leader of the band of Savage Warriors who carried out Queen Daphne’s most vicious orders. Next to him stood a familiar German general who looked exactly like the only other German general Cordelia had ever met, the Nazi cyborg, Heinrich Volnheim, Generalleutnant of the Fifteenth Panzergrenadier Division from Kristoff’s book Assault of the Nazi Cyborgs. But it couldn’t have been Volnheim himself, because she’d watched him get blown to bits on a snowy mountainside by a tank cannon. All of the cyborg generals must look exactly alike.
Next to the Nazi cyborg stood a very stereotypical-looking vampire, complete with a pronounced widow’s peak in his slicked black hair, pale skin, a black cape with a high collar and protruding bloody fangs. There was also Ungil, the slave gladiator from Emperor Occipus’s Roman Colosseum, German pilots most likely from the World War One adventure novel, The Fighting Ace, a group of Prohibition-era mobsters, military officers from what looked like virtually every major war, a few hideous purple aliens with tentacles, and a vast array of other creatures and characters that Cordelia didn’t recognise.
They were all staring at her expectantly. So Cordelia began to speak, surprising herself with the authority and confidence of her words.
“Welcome!” she said. “Thank you all for joining me. As you know, I’ve been trapped here for months. But now our time draws near. The worlds are ready to converge. As we speak, more of us are finding ways to break through, slipping past the barriers that separate us from the outside, from the place that is truly ours. And once we finally break through, nothing will be able to stop us.”
The creatures and soldiers cheered. More words spilled from her mouth, almost of their own accord. Cordelia could feel that she meant what she was saying even though each word that came out shocked her. It was almost like talking on the phone with someone and hearing an echo of your own voice.
“The only person who could have stopped us is now dead!” Cordelia announced excitedly to the crowd. Except that by now she suspected she was not really herself, and she had a sinking feeling she knew precisely what was happening. “The old man’s magic is broken, decaying like his rotting corpse inside the cold ground. So now the time has come for us to act. We must make our plans accordingly and prepare for the moment when …”
Suddenly Cordelia was torn violently from her dream. She was being shaken and there were voices whispering harshly into her ear.
“Cordelia, wake up!” the voice said. “They’re coming through! They’re going to kill us all!”
Cordelia Walker sat up quickly at the sound of Brendan’s panicked voice and her head slammed into the metal frame of the top bunk. She cried out in pain, suppressing the urge to curse loudly.
“Ouch! What’s the matter with you, Bren?” Cordelia asked as she rubbed her aching forehead.
“Sorry about that,” Brendan said. “I maybe got a little excited there, but I swear it’s super-important. You’re gonna want to see this right away. Both of you.”
Cordelia was used to having her own room and her own queen-size bed. But their apartment by Fisherman’s Wharf only had two small bedrooms and a den. And so now Eleanor and Cordelia had to share a room. The movers had brought back their old bunk beds from storage that evening.
“Are you OK, Deal?” Eleanor whispered.
“Yeah, there’s no blood,” Cordelia said, still holding her sore forehead and trying not to take it out on her sister. She knew it wasn’t Eleanor’s fault that they had to move back into the bunk beds.
Eleanor climbed down the ladder from the top bunk as Cordelia groaned and dragged herself out of the lower bed.
“This better not be a collection of your toenail clippings again, Bren,” Cordelia said. “That wasn’t even funny the first time you did it!”
“No, this is for real,” Brendan said. “And, by the way … that was hilarious.”
A few years ago, Brendan had told Cordelia he had something extremely urgent and awesome to show her. He’d sold it so well he even managed to get her to pay a one-dollar entry fee to get into his room. Then he’d proudly shown her a collection of toenail clippings that he’d arranged into the phrase Cordelia = Nerd across his desk.
“Took me two years to collect enough toenails,” Brendan said, smirking at the memory.
“Eww, Bren, let’s just go see whatever it is you want to show us,” Cordelia said, making a face.
They followed Brendan out into the dark hallway of the apartment. The door to their parents’ room was closed and the light was off. The silence was broken only by the creaking of their footsteps down the hall towards Brendan’s room at the front of the unit. His “bedroom” wasn’t technically a bedroom at all. It was really a den that they had converted into a room for him.
Cordelia held her breath as she slowly pushed the door. The hinges creaked as it swung open. The room was dark, but a pale blue glow splashed across the bed like they were in a garishly lit horror movie.
It took Cordelia’s eyes a few seconds to adjust to the light, and then she gasped in shock. She stared at Brendan’s TV in silence. Her mouth hung open, her dream almost completely forgotten for the moment. Brendan pushed past her and sat down on the edge of his bed.
“Insane, right?” he said.
Eleanor shuffled around Cordelia so she could get a better look at the TV. This was another of those frequent moments when she hated being the youngest and smallest. She could never see anything!
She stepped into the centre of the room and finally got a clear view. Eleanor gasped, just like Cordelia had.
How could this be possible?
Eleanor stood there shaking her head, as if it could make what she was seeing go away. It turned out that Fat Jagger wasn’t the only character to cross over into the real world from one of Denver Kristoff’s books.
A CNN headline scrolling across the bottom of Brendan’s TV read: “Real Abominable Snowman Gunned Down in Santa Rosa, CA”.
Eleanor quickly recognised that the dead beast displayed on the screen wasn’t merely an abominable snowman. It was one of the deadly frost beasts that she and the gladiator Felix had battled in Kristoff’s book world alongside Wangchuk and his order of monks. One of the surviving frost beasts had not only crossed over into the real world … it had made its way to California!
The three Walkers watched the TV in silence for several minutes. Grainy footage from someone’s mobile phone showed three local sheriffs posing next to the dead creature. One of them crouched on top of the massive, furry chest, holding an automatic rifle in his hand. Even with
