Evil Star

fight. There were five minutes until the first lesson but it would be worth being late to see the two of them slugging it out.
    Matt wasn't sure how to react. Part of him wanted to lash out at the other boy, but he knew that was exactly what Gavin wanted. One punch and he would go running off to a teacher with his bandaged hand. Matt would be in even more trouble.
    "Why don't you just get lost, Gavin?" he said. And then, before he could stop himself: "Or would you like me to rip open your other hand, too?"
    It was a stupid thing to say. Matt remembered what he'd been thinking as he walked home only the day before. The idea that he could actually use his powers to hurt someone his own age horrified him. So what was he doing making threats like this? Gavin was right. He was weird. A freak.
    He tried to backtrack. "I didn't mean to hurt you," he said. "And what I said just now, I didn't mean that, either. I didn't ask to come to this school."
    "Well, now we're asking you to leave," Gavin replied.
    Despite himself, Matt was beginning to get angry again.
    He stopped.
    He could smell burning.
    He didn't need to look around. He knew there was nothing on fire ...

    Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star
    .. . and if he closed his eyes he could see a sudden flare of yellow, a tea pot shaped like a teddy bear, his mother's dress on the morning she was killed. . . .
    And he knew it meant something was about to happen. That was what he had learned at Raven's Gate. The smell of burning was important. So were the brief flashes of mem-ory. There had been a teapot shaped like a teddy bear in the kitchen that morning, six years ago. The morning his parents had been killed. His mother had burned the toast. Somehow, the memories acted as a trigger. They were a signal that everything was about to change.
    But why was it happening now? Everything was under control. He wasn't in any danger. There were no chains he needed to smash, no door to be blown open. He forced him-self to ignore it and was relieved when the smell faded away.
    He looked up and saw that Gavin was staring at him. There were half a dozen other boys grouped around, too. How long had he been standing there, frozen like some sort of idiot? One or two of the boys were smirking. Matt struggled to speak. But he had nothing more to say.
    "Loser," Gavin muttered, and walked away.
    The other boys went with him, leaving Matt standing on his own outside the chapel door. It was half past nine. The first lessons of the day had begun.
    • • •
    Thirty miles away, the police had closed an entire street, sealing each end with blue-and-white tape and the usual signs: police — do not cross.

    Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star The unconscious man had been discovered by a milk-man. He had been lying on the pavement about a hundred meters away from a Shell garage. The paramedics had arrived and they had quickly established that he had been hit once with a blunt instrument. . .
    possibly a hammer or a crowbar. His skull was fractured . . . but the good news was that he was going to live. He'd sustained other injuries, too, and the police suspected that he might have been a passenger in some sort of truck. Perhaps he had been pushed out while the vehicle was moving at full speed.
    It had been easy to identify him. There was a wallet in his back pocket, complete with cash and credit cards. The fact that it hadn't been taken had automatically ruled out theft as a motive. His wife in Felixstowe had been woken up and was being taken at high speed to the emergency ward at the hospital where he was being treated.
    From her, the police had learned that Harry Shepherd was a driver for Shell petrol and should have been delivering over two thousand gallons of fuel to the garage.
    Once the police knew what Harry Shepherd had been driving, they also realized what was missing: the tanker itself. They immediately contacted Shell's office at Felixstowe and circulated the registration number of the vehicle to all units.
    The petrol in the tanker was worth many thousands of pounds. Was this why the driver had been knocked out? The police hoped so, because simple theft was something they could handle. It was certainly a lot less worrying than the alternative.
    But the thought was still there. This might, after all, be a quite different sort of crime. Suppose the tanker had been taken by terrorists. The local police put a call through to London, and the decision was made to keep