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The Power
Michael Grant
Sometimes one hero isn't enough – sometimes you need a full dozen. Mack’s search for his dazzling dozen continues in the fourth instalment of this funny, action-packed fantasy series by the New York Times bestselling author of GONE.Time is running out for Mack MacAvoy and the magnifica! It seems the only way they can defeat the Pale Queen and her evil daughter Risky is to learn the magical language of Vargran. So Mack, Jarrah, Xiao, Dietmar and Stephan travel to Europe to find the Key, an engraved stone that unlocks the power of Vargran.But can they locate the invisible castle of William “Blisterthong” MacGuffin, who guards the Key? (Yeah, we said Blisterthong. Yeah, it’s as painful as it sounds.)Mack has less than 30 days to master Vargran, round up the rest of the magnifica, and defeat Princess Risky. Will The Key be enough? Or is there something else Mack must find in order to save the world?
For Katherine, Jake, and Julia
Table of Contents
Cover (#u13436fc8-f3f4-53ee-909a-684ac6930d08)
Title Page (#u47362cc8-1ec2-5f76-972b-6976d23784db)
Dedication (#u11dd0ac4-2a88-576b-b584-8cedbe9033bd)
Not Far from the Earth’s Molten Core (Present Day) (#uff6c402d-6c9d-59d8-bdda-cb9c0be224e6)
Chapter One (#ud53b1f95-a33a-55fc-b6a9-1fabc76b2995)
Chapter Two (#uaf1bb928-afc7-5108-a6ae-fa7574f4cea6)
Chapter Three (#ub2fde8e9-8812-5740-9f11-217ff545ce53)
Chapter Four (#u1b00bb17-adf3-5b55-86fb-fc01e408bb7e)
Chapter Five (#u3616ba7f-778e-508e-aa60-cd6758adeb34)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-one (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-one (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-two (#litres_trial_promo)
The End (#litres_trial_promo)
A Note to Fans (#litres_trial_promo)
Footnotes (#litres_trial_promo)
Other Magnificent 12 books by Michael Grant (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
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rincess Ereskigal, whose friends (she had no friends) all called her Risky, was having a very difficult conversation with her mother, the Pale Queen.
“Are they destroyed?” the Pale Queen nagged. “Are the new Magnificent Twelve all dead?”
The Pale Queen could appear in just about any form she chose, but for the purposes of this particular conversation she was wearing one of her favorite forms: as tall as a moderate redwood tree, with a gigantic head—a quite beautiful head in some ways, but with skin so translucent that in the right light you could see the bones of her skull and her jaw and the individual teeth in her head, thirty-six of them in all, each long and sharp and curved back to facilitate the swallowing of large, whole, usually living things.
Her hair was white. Actually it was colorless if you looked at an individual strand, but taken all together it was white (like a polar bear’s). It went down to her bony shoulders, from which hung a floor-length robe made out of screams.
Not the sort of outfit you find for sale at your local mall. But the Pale Queen wove reality out of fear and loss and despair.
The dress had a cutaway so that you could see her powerful calves filling boots as tall as city light posts. The boots were dragon skin and used human skulls to make a row of buckles. The toes of the boots were about as big as canoes—sharp, barbed-steel canoes.
Frankly, Risky thought, the outfit was a bit “young” for her mother. But she wasn’t going to say anything about it unless her mother really annoyed her. She was holding that in reserve.
“Mother, I said I would do it, didn’t I?” Risky huffed.
“So, the new Magnificent Twelve have been destroyed?”
“Are you saying you don’t trust me?” Risky crossed her arms over her chest and actually stamped her foot.
Like the Pale Queen, Risky could take any form. But generally she preferred to appear as an extraordinarily attractive teenage girl with luscious red hair and eyes so green there was no way they could possibly be entirely human.
Her dress was a simple, formfitting thing with a neckline that was daring without being “too much.” And she most often went barefoot.
“I trust … NO ONE!” the Pale Queen raged. And when she raged, her minions—Skirrit, Tong Elves, Gudridan, Lepercons, and so on—were blown back like action figures in the blast of a leaf blower.
Risky wasn’t blown anywhere.
She feared her mother, as any sensible daughter would. There wasn’t a lot of motherly love in this family, and the Pale Queen could absolutely decide to gobble her daughter up like a shrimp. Which was exactly what she had done to Risky’s father.
Like a shrimp.
But at the same time, the Pale Queen needed Risky. For another few days the Pale Queen was bound by a powerful spell and could not escape the World Beneath and go romping around up top where all the tasty humans lived.
Risky, however, could.
Which meant Risky could take on jobs like eliminating the terrible threat posed by the Magnificent Twelve. A task she had so far failed to accomplish despite several attempts.
“I don’t think you’re taking this seriously,” the Pale Queen said more quietly, her tone larded with guilt-inducing disappointment.
“I am so,” Risky countered.
“No, you’re not.”
“Uh-huh!”
“No.”
“Yah-ha-ah!”
“I just don’t want you being distracted. Remember the last time?”
That was unfair.
That was a cheap shot.
A low blow.
Because yes, Risky did remember the last time she’d made a promise to her mother, a thousand years ago …
… And as you can see by the ellipses, the three little dots there, we’re going to tell that story. Later. But first, on to chapter 1 (#ud53b1f95-a33a-55fc-b6a9-1fabc76b2995).
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t turned out the Punjab was in India. Did you know that? No, you didn’t; don’t pretend. But don’t feel bad, either, because David “Mack” MacAvoy also had no idea where the Punjab was until very recently. He’s learned a lot about the Punjab lately.
For instance, he learned that the Punjab
is a warm, sunny place, at least at this particular time of year. Mack noticed how sunny and warm it was because he was on the ground staring right up at that warm sunny sun.
He was on the ground because creatures called Brembles were keeping him there.
Do you know what a Bremble is? Probably not, because Brembles no longer exist. (The last Bremble died in 1797, and he was quite old by then.) Brembles were a hybrid species, not something that occurred naturally, but a species created by evil forces. Imagine a large gorilla. No, twice that big. Now imagine that instead of being a peaceable plant eater, that oversized gorilla was extremely unpleasant. Now imagine that instead of fur, that extremely unpleasant oversized gorilla was covered in something very like porcupine quills. So, already: not good.
But now imagine that the porcupine quills were the least of it, because where a gorilla would have hands, Brembles had what looked like some terrible explosion of thorns, spikes, and razor wire. From the center of this melee of thorns, spikes, and razor wire protruded one spike, longer than the others, which was known as a chulk. This chulk was split so that it was really two spikes with a narrow gap between them, rather like two tines of a fork.
It was these chulks that the Brembles used to pin Mack in place. They had driven their chulks deep into the ground in such a way as to pin his four limbs down.
In addition to being staked out, he was also stretched a bit so that the muscles in his chest felt almost as if they might tear. This made it hard to breathe, which in turn made it hard to scream, which was okay because there was no one to come to his rescue.
Did he want to scream? Definitely.
Mack was utterly unable to reach a hand to his face, which was a shame because there were red ants crawling into his ears and nose and scouting around his eyeballs. These were not the little ants you might see at a picnic. These ants were not trying to get at the coleslaw. Unless coleslaw is a euphemism for Mack’s brain.
Mack had a pretty good view of one ant in particular that was walking right across his eyeball—his left eyeball, as it happened. Mack blinked furiously, hoping to discourage the ant, but each sweep of his eyelid just knocked the ant around a little, which is no way to discourage an ant.
Seen in extreme close-up, the ant was like some fuzzy, out-of-focus, terrifying alien robot. It had six legs, a carapace,
and a rounded-off pyramid of a head with huge, elongated pincers on the front. It had little black BBs for eyes. And its tail had a stinger like a combination claw and shot needle that would squirt painful venom if stabbed into something.
Like, say, an eyeball.
In all honesty, the ants were not as creepy as the giraffe-necked beetles that had been exploring Mack’s face just minutes before. But Mack had gotten rid of the beetles using his enlightened puissance—the mystical power possessed by only a few—and some words from the Vargran language—known to even fewer.
All he’d had to do was yell, “Lom-ma fabfor!”
and the beetles had disappeared. Mack had been studying his Vargran. He was all Vargraned up. He had come to the Punjab ready for trouble. Just one little problem: the enlightened puissance isn’t some endless water faucet with power just flowing out like, well, water. No, it’s more like a drip drip drip of water. It comes, then it stops, then slowly, sloooowly it builds back up until there’s enough to drip. A treasonous Tong Elf had once told him it took a full day, but Tong Elves lied. Still, it took a while, and while you were waiting for it to build back up … you’d find that ants had replaced the beetles, and now where were you?
Well, you were staked out by the chulks of Brembles in the Punjab with ants in your eyeballs, that’s where you were.
“Ahhhh!” he gasped because right then an ant bit him. Not the eyeball ant. An ear ant. An ant just inside his ear. The bottom part of the ear canal, if you want to be really specific.
It felt exactly like someone had heated a needle over a fire and then stabbed it into his ear canal. Not good.
“Ahhhh!” Mack cried again, straining for breath. “That hurts!”
“Aha! I see they are biting,” Valin gloated. “That’s very bad news, Mack, my timeless foe, because once one ant starts, they all get into it. Within a minute, a hundred ants will sink their painful stingers into you! You will cry out in pain. Then you will swell up. And of course die. And thus will my family’s honor be avenged!”
“I am not your timeless foe, you lunatic!”
Valin was standing over him but providing no shade from the blazing sun above. He was dressed flamboyantly in puffy zebra-striped pantaloons, black leather boots that rose to his knees, and a purple vest over no shirt. To top it all off, he had an amazing hat that looked like the kind of thing Puss in Boots or maybe a pirate might wear. It had an actual pink feather. From his wide belt hung a dagger and a short sword.
It was an eccentric look.
Beyond Valin stood the terrible Nafia
assassin Paddy “Nine Iron” Trout. Paddy was an elderly gentleman dressed all in green. Green suede shoes, green slacks, a green-and-yellow waistcoat over a very pale green shirt but beneath a bright-green sport coat. And on top of his shiny, bald head, there was a green bowler hat.
Even in India, which is a diverse and tolerant country known for interesting clothing, Valin and Paddy stood out. It’s not every day you see a pantalooned twelve-year-old with a sword traveling with a green-clad hundred-year-old Nafia assassin.
“Just let me kill …,” Paddy wheezed. He stopped, pulled a clear plastic respirator mask from his inside coat pocket, put it over his mouth and nose, and drew a deep breath. Then another.
And … another.
And …
… one more.
“Him,” Paddy said finally, concluding the sentence which had begun, “Just let me kill.”
Valin shook his head. “You are my mentor, Nine Iron, but this is a matter of family honor. First he must endure a hundred fiery stings!”
“As you …,” Paddy began.
And … breathed.
Okay, one more …
“Wish,” Paddy concluded.
“Let me go!” Mack cried. He pulled at the chulks, but no, he wasn’t pulling his way out of this one. The Brembles had him. Valin had him.
And the ants had him.
A second ant stung.
A third.
And now the stinging signal went out through all the ants.
Mack was about to die a most terrible death.
Really.
A fourth and fifth sting made Mack yell and thrash wildly. But now there was no more counting: the stings came fast and furious, a wave of them, pain upon pain, and already Mack felt himself swelling up, felt his airway constrict, felt his heart hammering way too fast, felt …
… felt death itself approaching, extending its bony claw to snuff the very life from him.
He pulled at the bony chulks, but each tug was weaker … weaker … until …
But before you’re subjected to the awful details of the death of a heroic young boy, you should probably be told just how we got to this terrible situation.
So, for the moment just put that whole death-by-ant thing on hold. We’ll get back to it. First we need to fill in a few details. Now, where were we when last we checked in with David “Mack” MacAvoy and the Magnificent Twelve?
I’ll tell you where we were: we were in trouble. So much trouble you would not believe it. If we were to pause right here and explain all the many kinds of trouble Mack was in (not even counting the ants!), we would never be able to get on with the exciting (and deadly) conclusion of the story.
So we’ll just do the short version.
In just a few days the Pale Queen would rise from her underground prison to destroy all freedom, crush all hope, deface all beauty, litter the landscape, cause the previously blemish-free to break out in unsightly pimples, and so terrorize the human race that even the bravest of folks (combat soldiers and sixth-grade teachers) would wet their pants in sheer, gibbering panic.
That’s what the bravest of folks would do, but Mack was not counted among the bravest of folks. Mack had twenty-one identified phobias. Phobias are not regular fears; phobias are irrational fears. Crazy fears. So fearing the Pale Queen? That was not a phobia, that was just sensible. But being deathly afraid of beards? Well, that would be a phobia.
Mack had that fear of beards, which was called pogonophobia. Arachnophobia, a fear of spiders; dentophobia, a fear of dentists. And of course pupaphobia, a fear of puppets. Pyrophobia, which is a fear of fire; selachophobia—sharks; vaccinophobia,
a fear of shots.
A few others.
The worst of all the fears, the king of all fears, was claustrophobia, a fear of small, enclosed spaces. Small enclosed spaces that you’re inside of. Like, say, a coffin. Or if someone locked you in a box.
Or a coffin.
People with claustrophobia really, really don’t like coffins. Most people don’t. But a person with claustrophobia will start sweating if you even just mention something like being buried alive.
I know! What a wimp, right?
And yet, to be shoved into a tiny space, unable to move your arms or legs, to feel yourself closed in, not enough air, all noise muffled, to hear perhaps the sound of dirt being shoveled onto …
So, maybe not so crazy, right?
Oddly enough, while Mack was afraid of all those things, he was not afraid of much else. He was irrationally terrified of many things but, no, Mack would not be among the wet-panted if he were to face the Pale Queen. If the Pale Queen had a beard,
then, sure, Mack would be paralyzed with fear. Or if she was carrying a shark. Otherwise, no. He was brave … except for where he was scared.
But isn’t that the case with most of us?
Mack had been given a weighty task: he was to assemble a new Magnificent Twelve to face and defeat the Pale Queen. The first Magnificent Twelve had defeated the evil one three thousand years ago but had, sadly, given her a fixed sentence of banishment, which was now up. The Pale Queen was coming back, baby, and she was looking to bring the pain and the horror and the devastation and the utter ruin of the human race.
Why was a Magnificent Twelve needed? Couldn’t the marines just deal with the Pale Queen?
No, they couldn’t because the Pale Queen had powers beyond anything the marines could imagine. With her magic she could stop a bullet in midair. She could melt tanks. She could cause jets to go off course and fire their missiles at coffee shops. And she had minions, millions of them in a dozen evil species, from Skirrit to Bowands to treasonous Tong Elves to massive Gudridan. All of them would die for the Pale Queen. The marines were totally unprepared for the stuff she and her minions could do.
Plus, she had a secret weapon: her daughter, a goddess of evil who had troubled many civilizations down through history and earned many dark names. To the ancient Greeks she was Hecate. To the ancient Welsh she was Skatha. The Norse called her Hel, and the Norse knew what they were talking about. Her original name came from the most ancient of civilizations, which called her Ereskigal. She was known to Mack (and to you) as Risky.
Prior to his first encounter with Risky, Mack had never really noticed girls all that much. But she, in her evil way, had caused him to notice. Which was a terrible thing. When Risky was around, Mack would notice her quite a lot and then he would sweat and stammer and his voice would change and, basically, well, she had a disturbing effect on him.
Also, she was always trying to kill him, which definitely heightened the disturbance Mack felt. On the one hand, the unsettling effects of puberty; and on the other hand, attempted murder. It’s just not a good combination no matter how you look at it.
The list of people trying to kill Mack was pretty impressive. Certainly Paddy “Nine Iron” Trout was trying to kill him. And so was Valin, his student. And so was Risky. And behind it all, her mother, the Pale Queen.
It was also the case that Thor had beefs with Mack.
Oh, and also William Blisterthöng MacGuffin.
Oh, and the Loch Ness Duck.
Oh, and the whole world had seen YouTube
proof that something very strange was going on with Mack, so the paparazzi were after him.
Oh, and Le Bureau parisien de la gloire, la magnificence, et la défense de la langue française
wanted Mack to put the Eiffel Tower back where it belonged. But only if he could do it in French.
You’re probably getting the wrong impression now. Mack was a very nice person. Really.
On Mack’s side he had the Magnifica, six of them so far in addition to himself: Jarrah, Xiao, Dietmar, Sylvie, Rodrigo, and Charlie. They were from, respectively, Australia, China, Germany, France, Argentina, and Britain. Each was twelve years old. Each had the enlightened puissance. Each had learned at least a little of the magical Vargran tongue.
They’d been through some fights together, the seven existing Magnifica. They had been welded into a single, tight unit. They were like SEAL Team Six but without guns or muscles.
In addition to the Magnifica, Mack had Stefan. Stefan was the former King of All Bullies at Richard Gere Middle School
in Sedona, Arizona. But he had to give up bullying for bodyguarding. Stefan was not one of the Magnifica because, sadly, he did not possess the enlightened puissance. What he did possess was largeness, strength, scariness, and a total inability to be afraid.
He was also loyal to Mack. Mack had saved Stefan’s life and so Mack was under Stefan’s wing, by which Stefan meant that if you intended to hurt Mack, he would stop you—by any means necessary.
You may be wondering where Stefan is now that Valin has Mack staked out and ant-bitten. Good question. The answer will take a while. So strap yourself in and prepare yourself, because this is the story of the final confrontation between good and evil, between Mack and the Magnificent Twelve plus Stefan on the one hand and Risky, Paddy, a whole horde of creatures and monsters, and the Pale Queen herself on the other hand.
There will be terror.
There will be dragons.
There will be widespread devastation. Because I have to warn you: if your definition of a happy ending is that everyone lives happily ever after, well, this isn’t going to end that way.
There is evil in the world, and evil always exacts a price from good.
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e have to find the remaining four and somehow convince Valin to join us,” Mack said. He was pacing thoughtfully up and down the suite at the Plaza Athénée hotel in Paris. It was quite a large suite and quite extravagantly beautiful. It was morning, so there were croissants and hot chocolate in silver service on the sideboard.
There were also croissant crumbs on the carpet and all three beds, and ditto hot-chocolate stains. This was the main boys’ room—Mack, Dietmar, and Stefan had slept here. The secondary boys’ room had been shared by Charlie and Rodrigo and was across the hall. The girls’ suite was down one floor and had been enjoyed by Jarrah, Xiao, and Sylvie.
The two large suites cost 2,000 euros
each, while the smaller suite cost a mere 1,200 euros. Breakfast for seven cost just under 300 euros, which was kind of a lot, and given that they were spending 5,200 euros a night for the rooms, you’d have thought the Plaza Athénée would kick in a free breakfast. But no.
(http://www.themag12.com)
Fortunately Mack still had the special credit card with most of a million-dollar credit line.
There were gendarmes outside each of the three doors to the suite, but Mack wasn’t too worried about evading them. If you can fight Risky to a draw, you can cope with a handful of French cops.
Everyone was in the largest suite now, lounging on the beds, the sofas, the fancy chairs, and the floor—seven of the most important and powerful twelve-year-olds in human history. Plus Stefan, the world’s most intimidating fifteen-year-old.
And they were all watching Mack pace thoughtfully. (Jarrah was watching suspiciously since it seemed to her that Mack kept pacing closer and closer to the last remaining croissant.)
“We need Grimluk,” Dietmar said. “He will give us a clue to the remaining Magnifica.”
“We’ve been here two and a half weeks, guys. I’ve spent a lot of time in the bathroom staring at the fixtures and I haven’t seen him,” Mack said.
Grimluk had a tendency to appear in shiny objects—sometimes mirrors, sometimes chrome bathroom fixtures.
“Maybe he is dead,” Sylvie suggested. “It is the fate of all, is it not? We can perhaps delay the tolling of that final hour, and yet will it come.”
Sylvie was philosophical. She was short and pretty and French with a sort of goth-emo look, and Mack found her fascinating. She was also Valin’s half sister. But not evil like him.
“Why should Grimluk die now?” Dietmar wondered. “He’s lived for three thousand years.”
“Who is this Grimluk bloke again?” Charlie asked. Charlie had only recently joined up, along with Rodrigo, and honestly, he sometimes didn’t pay attention.
“One of the original Magnificent Twelve from three thousand years ago,” Xiao explained. She was a patient person, Xiao was. Also not technically a person. She was looking very person-like at the moment, looking like a beautiful Chinese girl, but her true self was a dragon. Not a scary Western dragon—a more serpentine, turquoise, philosophical Chinese dragon. Like if the usual dragon matured and stopped trying to look all punk and took up reading books. “Grimluk has been Mack’s guide from the start.”
Rodrigo raised one elegant eyebrow. “Yes, so your guide—our guide—is a three-thousand-year-old man who speaks from bathrooms.”
Jarrah said, “Mack, unless we have Valin, we’ll never be the Twelve. We best go find that git and see if we can’t change his mind.” Jarrah was always about active verbs. Go. Find. Jump. Yell. Smack. Fight.
“I can change Valin’s mind,” Stefan said, and slammed his fist into the palm of his hand.
“We don’t know where Valin is any more than we know where the remaining four Magnifica are,” Mack said. “Last we saw of Valin, he was here in Paris. All we know is that whatever he has against me started sometime long, long ago in the Punjab.”
“Then let’s go, right?” Jarrah said, and jumped up. Jarrah had been the first of the Magnifica to join Mack. She had her mother’s dark skin and her father’s blond hair and a wild recklessness that had absolutely captured Stefan’s affection.
No one had a better idea, although Mack waited to hear one. He liked Paris. He liked this fancy hotel. He liked the fact that days had passed without anyone actively trying to kill him. But, nope, no one had a better idea. Darn it.
Thus it was that with croissant crumbs still unbrushed from their lips, the Magnificent Seven cast a quick Vargran spell on the gendarmes, who were caused, by virtue of this magic, to go en masse to the restaurant downstairs and order well-done steaks,
allowing the Magnifica to escape.
You may be wondering: How does one get from Paris, France, to the Punjab? Well, first you find out that the largest city in the Indian Punjab is Amritsar, then you get onto Expedia and find out it’s a twelve-hour flight and costs 5,139 US dollars if you’re flying first class. And if you have a million-dollar credit card, why wouldn’t you fly first class?
For once it would be an easy flight for Mack. He did not suffer from any flying-related phobias, so long as he wasn’t flying over the ocean. Fly Mack over the ocean and you’d barely hear the in-flight movie over the sound of his chattering teeth, his weeping, his sudden panicky yelps, and the inevitable (but necessary) crunch of Stefan’s knuckles against Mack’s jaw, putting him to sleep.
Long story short, at ten a.m. the next day they stepped, well-rested (hey, first class, remember?), into the Amritsar airport. They were met by the guide Mack had arranged in advance. This turned out to be a man in a purple turban and an amazing beard named Singh. The man, not the beard. Or the turban.
To clarify, neither the beard nor the turban was named Singh, but the tour guide was.
It didn’t matter, because Singh’s beard was a major beard. It was glossy black, and curled up inside itself into a sort of concentrated, extra-strength beard.
“Ah ah ah!” Mack cried, and backpedaled away, crashing into the living dead (the people who had flown coach), who snarled angrily as they pushed past, dragging their squalling children and diaper bags.
“What’s the matter?” Rodrigo demanded. He was a sophisticated kid and did not like being embarrassed in public.
“Oh, my goodness: beard!”
Jarrah said. Jarrah knew most of Mack’s little “issues.”
“Ah ah ah ah!” Mack continued to cry.
And then … then he looked around. It was as if scales had fallen from his eyes, and he saw, truly saw, that he was surrounded by beards. Beards and turbans, but the turbans were rather attractive, really, coming as they did in a wide array of colors. But beards … beards were a problem.
This might as well have been the annual beard convention. The percentage of people with beards here was greater than the percentage of Civil War generals with beards. And these were not ironic, hipster beards, but full-on, glossy black beards.
Mack had slept most of the way on the plane and when he wasn’t sleeping he was playing video games on the in-flight entertainment system. (In first class they let you win all the games.) So he had not noticed that about half the men (and some of the women) on the flight had beards.
But now, as he looked around, eyes darting, breath coming short and fast, heart beating like a gerbil who’d fallen into a silo of coffee beans and had to eat his way out, he realized beards … terrifying beards … were everywhere.
The Punjab was the home office of beards!
Stefan made a grab for Mack but missed, and Mack went screaming off through the crowd, bouncing like a pinball from one nonplussed traveler to the next.
Singh said, “Perhaps your friend has jet lag?”
“Nah, he’s just crazy,” Jarrah said, but affectionately.
Stefan sighed and raced after Mack and finally tackled him, hefted him onto his shoulder, walked toward the men’s room, and as he passed Jarrah said, “Maybe a swirlie will calm him down.”
As a former bully, Stefan had a limited imagination when it came to problem solving. There was pretty much:
1) Threatening.
2) Punching.
3) Dunking someone’s head in a toilet (swirlie).
Mack was still yelling like a madman when Stefan slammed him—as gently as he could—against the men’s room wall and said, “Do I have to punch you? Or will a swirlie do it?”
Mack’s breath was coming in short, panicky gasps. But he had stopped screaming, which was good.
“Get a grip,” Stefan said, using his lowest level of threatening voice. It was almost kind. Not really, but for him.
“You don’t understand. I—I-I-I …”
Stefan let him go, and Mack, still shaking, tried to get a grip. What he gripped was the sink. He stared at his reflection in the mirror. He didn’t look good, frankly. He looked old—really, really old. He had wrinkles that looked like an aerial map of the Rocky Mountains. His teeth were tinged green. His hair was pale and wispy. His eyes were unfocused, blank, wandering randomly around like he was following two agitated flies simultaneously.
In fact, he looked exactly like Grimluk.
“Grimluk!” Mack cried. Because it was true: the reflection was no reflection at all but the familiar, astoundingly old, grizzled, gamy, quite-possibly-somewhat-dead face of Grimluk.
“I fade … Mack of the Magnifica … I weaken …”
“Oh no you don’t!” Mack snapped. “You just got here!”
Grimluk blinked. “Oh? It felt like longer. Where are you?”
“The Punjab!”
“Hmmm. I don’t know that one,” Grimluk said. “In my day we only had seven countries: Funguslakia, North Rot, Crushia, the Republic of Stench, Scabia, Eczema, and Delaware.”
“I don’t care. Grimluk, I’m trying to find Valin and solve whatever his problem is. Plus I still have to figure out who the others are. You have to help!”
“Others?”
“I only have six with me: Jarrah, Xiao, Dietmar, Sylvie, Charlie, and Rodrigo.”
“Just eight?”
“No, that’s seven total, counting me. We still need Valin and four more.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. Yes. I can do basic math!”
Grimluk drew himself up with as much dignity as he could while peering out of a smeared bathroom mirror and said, “There is no need to flaunt your fancy modern learning. I fade … I weaken … I was never … good … at math …”
“Where do I find Valin and the other four?”
“Not in the same place, Mack.”
At this point Stefan said, “You’re talking to the old dude I can’t see, right?”
Stefan’s remark caused Mack to look around and take notice of the fact that three very polite tourists from Japan were taking video of what looked like a crazy kid talking—yelling, actually—at a mirror.
“I’m not crazy,” Mack said. No one was convinced.
“Valin is near, though he won’t be when you catch him,” Grimluk said. “The others … the others …”
And sure enough, the image faded, and the ancient voice—a voice so old that when Grimluk spoke, you could practically hear wrinkles—likewise faded out.
“Nooooo!” Mack pounded the mirror because now his own reflection had appeared, replacing Grimluk’s.
Grimluk faded back in. “A gate …”
“A what?”
“Golden … of … I see a pillar of orange …”
“No, no, no, none of that cryptic stuff,” Mack yelled. “We are running out of time!”
“Ants!” Grimluk cried.
“What?”
“Beware of ants!”
“I promise I will,” Mack yelled. “Now just tell me how to find—”
“I see a bridge of orange …”
“What?”
“Actually more of a … I fade … I weaken …”
“Get back here!”
“Reddish orange. A gate of gold.”
And with that, he was gone.
“Grimluk!” Mack howled.
Making a “grrrrrr” face, Mack stormed out of the bathroom, to find the others talking to Singh. Mack kept his distance. In his present state of mind, eight feet felt like the minimum beard-clearance zone. Probably when he calmed down he’d start feeling a little better about it. But right now his head was swimming and he was tired and he was on edge.
And that was when things got really bad. Because as Mack was turning Grimluk’s insane, rambling, incoherent, nonsensical, senile words over and over again in his head, a massive, glittering, impossible wall of steel came crashing down through the roof, down through the huge slanted windows, down through the vegetarian restaurant, down through the adjacent and fortunately unoccupied boarding area.
It missed Mack by nine inches and cut him off from his friends.
Ker-RAAAAASH!
Followed by, Bam! Screeeeech! Tinkle, tinkle, tinkle. And screams!
The noise was deafening. Broken glass, twisted aluminum rafters, screams, cries. It sounded like the end of the world punctuated with an earthshaking impact that hit so hard Mack felt as if the floor had attacked his feet. (He was not at his most rational, just then.)
The wall of steel had come down like a guillotine or a meat cleaver. It sliced right across the airport. Mack’s frantic, terrified glances did not show anyone around him killed—thankfully—but the restaurant was destroyed, the kitchen shattered, and indeed globs of sarson da saag
struck Mack in the cheek.
He looked, sickened with fear, at the place where the blade bit into the floor. He did not see any body parts there. That was a good thing. His thoughts had gone straight to Sylvie, for some reason, but he did not see her hands or head lying separated from the rest of her.
“Huh,” Stefan remarked from the opposite side of the steel wall.
Just as quickly and noisily as it had come slashing down, the wall of steel pulled back up, revealing a deep gash right across the airport.
Through the chasm in the roof Mack saw that the steel wall was in fact an impossibly huge blade. And he saw that said blade was the blade of a terrifyingly large scimitar.
And he further saw that holding that huge scimitar was a massive hand, a hand the size of a middle school multipurpose room. The fingers were detailed with rings of gold, some with rubies the size of Subarus.
Not surprisingly, there was an arm. You’d expect that arm to be large, and it was; oh, it definitely was. But by the time Mack’s eyes traveled from scimitar to hand to arm, he was more taken by the bare chest as wide as a football field and, beyond, way up in the air, fifty feet or more above the airport, a head.
How big was the head? Have you ever seen the Macy’s Thanksgiving parade with the giant helium-filled floats of, like, Spider-Man? Okay, imagine a pumpkin. Now imagine an evil, supervillain pumpkin so big that if it was a helium-filled float it would make helium-filled Spidey say, “Whoa!”
That’s how big.
There was only one good thing about that gigantic head atop that gigantic body: it did not have a beard. It was a bit young for a beard.
In another odd sort of detail, there was a man in the pocket of the giant’s vest. Yes, the giant was so large that a man could stand in his vest pocket.
That pocketed man was dressed all in green.
“Ha!” the giant roared. “HA!” In a voice that caused decorative flags to tear loose from their poles. “I’ve got you now, Mack!”
The giant was Valin. And you’ve already guessed the name of the man in his pocket.
(#ulink_c857be97-7dc0-51fe-9b27-b2a788bc748c)
MEANWHILE, 7,831 MILES AWAY, IN SEDONA, ARIZONA
he golem was at a dance with Camaro Angianelli.
The golem was a creature … well, that seems harsh, doesn’t it? Referring to someone as a creature? Let’s take another run at that. The golem was a … being. A person, even, made of mud and twigs and magically infused with life and a sense of purpose by the placement in his mouth of a tiny scroll bearing two words: Be Mack.
Grimluk had created the golem to cover for Mack while Mack was off trying to save the world.
Despite the fact that the golem had a tendency to wash away in the rain, and occasionally would grow or shrink in unpredictable ways, and turned in history papers with titles like “What Color Was the Sky in 1812? Green?” no one had discovered his secret.
No one, at least, until Camaro Angianelli figured out that something was very odd about this not-quite-Mack.
Camaro had recently been promoted to Queen of All Bullies at Richard Gere Middle School.
She had been anointed queen when Tony Pooch, her last competition for the job, had run from a fight with her. Of course if Stefan came back, she would have no choice but to return the title of Bully Supreme to him—even Camaro didn’t want to have to take on Stefan. But for now Camaro was riding high. She had appointed many new sub-bullies, changing the categories to keep up with the times. For example, the category of “nerd” was now combined with “dork” and they had a single bully. (Geeks had been exempted from bullying after paying Camaro a bribe in the form of cheat codes to Halo 4.) Preppies had disappeared altogether, to be replaced by hipsters.
Twilight fans were assigned a new bully—the old one had been found actually reading one of the books,
which was totally against the spirit of things.
Camaro had also brought a new level of humaneness to the organized bully system that Stefan had created. For example, she had set limits on the amount of lunch money that could be extorted (20 percent for most kids, 40 percent for rich kids).
More revolutionary still, Camaro had created the brand-new position of Popular Mean Girls Bully. The PMGs had never liked Camaro, and Camaro could hold a grudge. The Popular Mean Girls’ bully, whose name was Jennifer Schwarz, was not especially big or strong, but she made up for it by being incredibly obnoxious and absolutely relentless. She bullied through nagging and refusing to go away, and it was quite effective. In fact, Jennifer Schwarz had set up a nice little business on the side selling the lip gloss, earrings, and cell phone skins she extorted from the PMGs.
Anyway, before we got distracted by the politics of bullying, we were at a dance. Camaro was a pretty good dancer. The golem was … Hmmm. Well, as a dancer, the golem was … What’s a good word? He was … original. Yes, original. For one thing, he took up a fair amount of room when he danced. In fact, it was best to stay at least ten feet back because the flailing, falling, plunging, and temporary body-part loss could endanger innocent bystanders.
Everyone kind of liked the way he could dance up the walls, but most folks thought dancing on the ceiling was just show-offy. And, too, he yelped at odd times.
But no one said anything or even looked at him funny because he was Camaro’s boyfriend. And in case it isn’t clear by now, Camaro was not a girl you messed with. For her part, she liked the golem’s exuberance. She alone knew that he was not really Mack. She alone knew that there was something supernatural about him. And that he had secrets. And that he could, if controlled by the wrong person, become very, very dangerous.
Risky had placed a cell phone in the golem’s mouth at one point hoping to use texts to reprogram the golem from playing the part of Mack to becoming the Destroyer.
Camaro had put a stop to that. But she was not foolish enough to believe that Risky was done with the golem.
For now, though, it was all good from her point of view. In fact, Camaro was having a really nice time dancing with the golem.
Happiness. Warm, sweet, gentle happiness.
But how long was that going to last with the Pale Queen nearing the date when she would emerge to trouble all of humanity?
Not long, that’s how long.
Camaro looked out over her queendom, out at the two hundred or so kids—some dancing, most standing awkwardly and gawping, or staring fixedly down at their smartphones—and it was then she noticed that some of the kids were unfamiliar to her.
Some were kid-sized in terms of tallness, but broader, thicker, more muscular, and very strangely dressed in lederhosen.
Now that she noticed, some of the chaperones were a little unusual, too. They had a distinctly insect-like aspect to them. As if the moms and dads had been replaced by large grasshoppers wearing human clothing.
Camaro stopped dancing, although the golem kept right on. Her eyes narrowed and she cracked her knuckles just the way Stefan would have.
Something disturbing was happening in the queendom of Camaro Angianelli. She didn’t yet know of the treasonous Tong Elves, who, coincidentally, were about the size of middle-schoolers but broader, thicker, creepier, and more muscular, and very strangely dressed.
Nor did she know of the foul Skirrit species with their unwholesome similarity to grasshoppers.
But she soon would.
She took three bold steps, yanked the golem down off the wall, pinned his arms so he would stop flailing (dancing), and said, “Give me your phone: I need to talk to Mack.”
(#ulink_8efef6b0-71de-5e31-b1e2-3405eaa873ba)
here was a time when a hundred-foot-tall twelve-year-old with a scimitar and a Nafia hit man in his pocket would have scared Mack.
But Mack had learned a few things. He’d been in a few fights. He’d stood up to Skirrit, Tong Elves, Lepercons, even Gudridan. He’d been yanked out of a jet over the South Pacific. He’d been fired through the air by a crazy old Scotsman.
Most of all: after much stalling, he’d actually finally studied some Vargran from the Vargran Key.
The giant Valin raised his scimitar, this time shifting his grip so that rather than readying to bring it down in a broad sweeping cut he could stab it down, point first. Valin could see Mack now; he could see him through the hole in the roof, and his beef was specifically with Mack.
He wasn’t an indiscriminate killer, after all. He wanted to kill Mack, not a bunch of innocent airline passengers.
“Lom-ma poindra!” Mack cried.
Why did he yell that? Because those are the Vargran words for “disappear sword!” In the imperative, or “or else!” tense that is unique to Vargran.
Mack was pretty sure this would work, so he was upset when instead of disappearing, the gigantic scimitar came stabbing straight down at him.
He jumped back, tripped, fell on his butt, and had to scoot away like a dog on a carpet.
The point of the scimitar hit the floor, threw up a spray of broken tile, and plunged clear down through the floor into the underlying dirt.
“What the heck?” Mack asked.
Valin yanked the weapon skyward again. “It’s not a sword, moron,” Valin said in a giant voice. “It’s a scimitar!”
Yes. Well, it was a scimitar, which is a kind of sword, but Vargran spells do require some specificity.
And now Mack could feel that in his panic he had used up his enlightened puissance. He felt the emptiness, the slight sadness (slight because sadness has a hard time competing with terror) that came from the expenditure of power.
Down came the swor— the scimitar.
Mack was so upset he didn’t even move. Fortunately Stefan was not so depressed. He ran, took a flying leap, and hit Mack like a sixteen-pound (the largest size) bowling ball knocking into one wobbly pin.
“Oooof!”
Followed by, ker-RAAASH!
It was a close call. The scimitar passed so near that it actually sliced through the tail of Mack’s T-shirt. Had Stefan been even a millisecond slower, Mack would have been impaled. He would never have survived long enough to have ants bite his eyeballs.
“Thanks,” Mack gasped. He shot a look at his stunned fellow Magnifica and yelled, “A little help?”
Dietmar was quickest to respond. “What is the word for scimitar?”
“Never mind the sword, go after Valin!” Jarrah said, which was a pretty reasonable suggestion, especially since Mack was now running to get out of Valin’s line of sight.
Ker-RASH!
Down came the scimitar again.
“Give up, Mack! Surrender before innocent people are hurt!” Valin cried in a voice that rattled the shattered glass like BBs on a drum.
Mack had ducked under a bench. He was gasping for breath, looking beseechingly at his friends. Really: time for them to do something, because maybe Valin couldn’t see him here but he could still randomly—
Ker-RASH!
The scimitar came stabbing down through a previously undestroyed section of the airport, and this time the point landed just between two little kids. Neither was hurt, but it was too close. Too close by far.
“Okay, stop!” Mack yelled. “Stop. I’ll surrender!”
He rolled out from under the bench. Mack held up his hands.
It was Xiao—she was always a studious one—who came up with just the right Vargran spell. But she knew she’d need help to pull off something this hard.
So as Mack was holding up his hands and Stefan was glaring helplessly up at giant Valin, Xiao joined hands with Jarrah, Charlie, and Sylvie—it felt like a spell that four people could manage—and together they chanted, “A-ma Mack exel-i Valin.”
Or in English: “Make Mack bigger than Valin.”
Yeah. Bigger.
They did not specify a time frame. So it happened with remarkable speed. One second Mack was holding his hands up in surrender, and about three seconds later those hands hit the ceiling of the airport and pushed it up and literally tipped it right off. The airport at Amritsar is a simple rectangle, with a lid-like roof atop plate glass windows, so the roof came away almost as a single piece, a huge steel-and-glass rectangle.
You thought the noise of the scimitar was loud? This was even louder, because all the way around the roof were steel beams held in place by thick rivets and welds, and breaking all that was noisy.
But break it Mack did, and as he rose, as he grew, as he soared high up into the air, he pushed the roof off. It crashed atop a parked jet—empty aside from the cleaning crew, who managed to survive by cramming into the tiny bathroom.
Mack grew and grew. It was a painless process, but a potentially embarrassing one since Mack’s clothing was human-sized. He was concerned he might have a sort of Incredible Hulk clothing issue, but, fortunately for all concerned, his clothing grew along with him.
There was quite a view from a hundred feet up. Mack saw farm fields, and a small city, and the bigger city of Amritsar off to the south.
He also saw a small private jet coming in for a landing and flying directly toward him right around eye level. The pilot was staring with disbelieving eyes, too transfixed by the bizarreness of two gigantic twelve-year-olds to steer away.
Mack dodged aside, ducking low, which was very good luck because at that very moment Valin swung his scimitar horizontally as if he meant to cut off Mack’s head.
The scimitar passed harmlessly over Mack’s head but sliced the tail right off the private plane.
This was bad. The reason planes have a tail is that it allows them to turn. Also it keeps them from either pitching straight down to the ground or straight up in the air and actually falling over backward and then heading straight for the ground.
That’s what happened.
“Hey!” Mack yelled. “The plane!”
But Valin was already preparing for a second scimitar swing.
Mack made a desperate snatch for the plane. It was very strange, like trying to grab a badminton shuttlecock in midair. He learned something surprising: like the feathers of a badminton shuttlecock, actual airplane wings aren’t all that strong if you grab them with a giant fist.
He also learned: jet engines are really hot.
“Ahhh!” he yelled.
The three passengers on the jet also yelled, “Ahhh!” but with an Indian accent.
Mack swung with the direction of the jet, trying desperately not to crush it as it went from two hundred miles an hour to zero miles an hour in a single second.
The scimitar swung!
Too late to duck!
“(Ch)on-ma Mack i poindrafol!” was shouted with a German accent.
Dietmar!
In a millisecond a huge shield appeared in the air between Mack and the flashing scimitar.
CLANNNNNNNNG!
The blade bit into the shield but not through. Instantly Mack slid his forearm into the straps of the shield, even as he carefully held the jet with his other hand. He knelt, laid the jet on the ground—upside down, but hey, it was better than crashing.
Valin was breathing hard—swinging a scimitar the size of a sequoia isn’t easy, especially if you’re not a practiced swordsman.
Mack, for his part, stuck his now-giant fingers into his giant mouth and winced at the pain from the jet exhaust.
“What is your problem?” Mack yelled at Valin, mumbling because of the fingers in his mouth.
“There is bad blood between our two families!” Valin cried.
Paddy “Nine Iron” Trout wheezed, “Yes, an ancient blood feud of …”
He reached for his oxygen bottle, but Mack was not in the mood to wait politely.
“Whatever it was, I apologize, all right?” Mack said.
“Ah, so you admit that your great-great-great …” This went on for a while, so for brevity’s sake let’s just cut to: “… great-grandfather dishonored my family and destroyed my ancestry!”
“What the … Look, I don’t even—”
“My ancestors swore to Guru Hargobind himself that they would never rest until the insult was—”
“Guru Hargobind?”
“Aha! So you do know! And so, you die!”
Valin stabbed at Mack and missed, but dodging had put Mack off balance. He would not be able to avoid the next sweep of that terrible sword.
Suddenly a new creature appeared on the scene. It was as big as Mack and as big as Valin. But this giant was Stefan—magicked into existence by the combined Vargran efforts of three of the Magnifica below.
“Give me that,” Stefan growled to Mack, and yanked the shield from his arm.
Valin raised the scimitar high as if to strike at Stefan, but Stefan wasn’t having it. Not even a little. He raised the shield over his head and charged straight at Valin like an enraged bull, yelling, “Gaaaahhhhh!”
Valin swallowed hard, clapped a protective hand over Paddy “Nine Iron,” still peeking out of his pocket, and ran away, waving the scimitar ineffectually over his shoulder. “This is not over! I will force you to face your guilt!”
Huge Mack and huge Stefan stared at each other.
“Should I go after him?” Stefan asked.
“No. We’ve already destroyed the airport. We could end up crushing cars and houses.”
“Huh,” Stefan said, and he was not happy about it. Most likely because he had always been a great admirer of Godzilla and would have relished crushing some houses with Mack.
But Mack had a better idea. He looked down at tiny Xiao and said, “That treaty that says you can’t be your dragon self in the lands of Western dragons …”
Xiao nodded, grinned, and said, “This is no longer the West.”
In seconds she had left behind her human form and taken on her own, true form as a wingless turquoise Chinese dragon. She slithered into the air—a remarkable thing to see—and, flying low to the ground to avoid being spotted by Valin, went after him and the Nafia assassin.
EVEN LONGER AGO THAN EVER BEFORE
The Pale Queen had been feared and worshipped since human beings first learned to walk erect. In fact, the Pale Queen had helped that process along. Anytime she saw an early human—whether it was a Homo erectus, a Homo habilis, or even a Homo neanderthalensis—who was leaning too far forward or knuckle-walking, she would say, “Hey! Stand up straight!” And if they didn’t, she’d kill them with an energy bolt or by dropping rocks on their heads.
She was like a very strict teacher.
After many, many years of this, there weren’t all that many early humans knuckle-walking anymore. Standing fully upright turned out to make a lot of sense in terms of survival.
The Pale Queen needed early humans to walk upright because that would free their hands to do the important work of writing about the Pale Queen, building temples for the Pale Queen, and sacrificing sheep and maidens to the Pale Queen. It took her quite a while to get humans to that point, and her efforts earned her a lot of respect in the primitive ancient cities of Ur of the Chaldees, Nineveh of the Assyrians, Sumer of the Akkadians, and Indianapolis of the Pacers.
But when Babylon came along, the Babylonians chilled the Pale Queen. The Babylonians thought they were all that, and they saw the Pale Queen as being last year’s model when it came to godding. So there was no temple to the Pale Queen, and no cult of shaved-headed priests, and no sheep or maidens being sacrificed.
Which was totally unacceptable to the Pale Queen.
But you know how kids are supposed to help around the house? How they are supposed to have a list of chores and just do them without being nagged ten times? Well, same thing in the Pale Queen’s house. Her daughter expected to have everything handed to her: goddess robes, flying sandals, chariots drawn by unicorns, parties with her friends (she had no friends), and she didn’t want to have to do any of the work.
“Listen to me, young lady, I’m giving you a chore to do. You will make the Babylonians worship me. I want a main temple and two smaller—”
“Why are you picking on me?” Risky demanded.
“I’m not picking on you. I’m telling you what I want you to do.”
Heavy sigh. “Okay, what? Gah!”
“I want a main temple and two smaller ones. The main one has to be bigger than Astarte’s. I want a cult. I want sacrifices. And I want some kind of invocation.”
“What’s an invocation? Am I supposed to know that?”
The Pale Queen gritted her thirty-six teeth because Risky was grinding her last nerve. “An invocation is like when someone says, �Praise Astarte!’ or �Zeus, that hurt!’ or, �Where the Baal are my keys?’ That kind of thing.”
So Risky rolled her eyes and promised to do it next millennium. But the Pale Queen wasn’t having it and insisted her daughter get out right now, young lady, and get started.
So verily did Risky go forth into the land of Babylon. Babylon was watered by two rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates. In those very early days Babylon was still a bit scruffy. Some of the best buildings were made of stone, but a lot were just mud smeared over sticks.
Risky was walking through the ox-poop-strewn streets, threading her way past lepers and refusing offers of souvenirs from the many shopkeepers.
And then she saw him.
Yes, him.
He was the strongest, handsomest, most armored-up guy she had ever seen in her life.
To be honest, Risky hadn’t dated much during the first thousand years of her existence. What human males she had even seen had been in the process of being eaten by her mother. Or occasionally by Risky herself. And it’s hard to get a good impression of a guy who is crying and begging for his life, only to be gobbled up.
This, however, was different.
He was tall. His hair was lustrous black. His armor glittered silver and gold in the sunlight. He had almost all of his teeth and he did not smell like a goat, which was pretty rare in Babylon. The concept of hotness had not yet been invented, but if it had been, Risky would have said he was hot.
Risky stopped in the middle of the street and stared. She did not know how to play it cool. Like hotness, cool had also not yet been invented, so people just pretty much acted however they felt and expressed their emotions openly.
These were very primitive times.
“Why are you staring at me?” the young man asked.
“Because your hands are as gold rings set with beryl,” Risky said. “Your belly is as bright ivory overlaid with sapphires. Your legs are as pillars of marble set upon sockets of fine gold. Your countenance is as Lebanon, excellent as the cedars, and your mouth is most suh-weet.”
Somehow the sight of this boy was making Risky go weak in the knees but strong in the similes. She knew she was babbling. She knew it was crazy, but it was how she felt. She felt smitten. She felt gobsmacked. She felt … love.
“I like your hair,” the boy said. “You have the hair of a goddess.”
“I am a goddess,” Risky pointed out. “See?” To demonstrate, she transformed into a huge beast made up of the useful parts of a lion, a bear, a ram, and a bull. But she kept the hair through the whole thing.
The boy turned and ran, but Risky bounded on her powerful kangaroo legs (yeah, kangaroo, too) and smacked him down on his back. She landed atop him and once again became her usual amazingly attractive self.
“What’s your name, human boy?”
“G-G-G-G-Gil.”
“G-G-G-G-Gil?”
He swallowed hard and said, “Gil. Gil Gamesh.”
“Epic,” she said approvingly. She jumped up effortlessly and pulled him to his feet. “I need to build a temple for the Pale Queen.”
“The Pale Queen?” Gil echoed. He frowned. “But isn’t she evil?”
“Oh, she’s evil all right,” Risky said with airy dismissal.
“I heard she demanded a human sacrifice of a thousand Amalekites.”
Risky spread her hands and smiled. “They were out of goats.”
“Will she demand human sacrifices here in Babylon?”
“That depends. How fast do you think we can get a temple built?”
Oh, the days that followed were magical for Risky. She and Gil chose an architect for the temple. Then they picked out draperies and looked at paint samples and interviewed potential priests. There were so many details: whether to have pews or just make everyone stand, whether they would have music—possibly bleating horns—which knives to use to cut the throats of sacrifices, whether the blood would be caught in copper bowls or silver bowls. (Both were hard to keep polished, but this “bronze” everyone was talking about struck them both as too newfangled.)
Gil took one job for himself, keeping it coyly secret from Risky: finding a sculptor for the great statue of the Pale Queen that would dominate the altar.
The more they worked together, the more they liked each other. They held hands. They gazed into each other’s eyes. Gil even wrote her poetry.
Your neck is like a gazelle’s,
You’re good at magic and spells,
Your skin is fair,
I like your hair,
When I look at you my heart swells.
No one said it was great poetry. Gil was just starting out as a writer and poet. He was actually much better at sword fighting than writing. But he was also very organized and had a way of getting things done that sometimes surprised Risky. When it was time to form the bricks for the temple’s foundation, Risky suggested sending a conquering army to enslave the Canaanites and use their blood to mix with the mortar.
Gil came up with a totally different approach: he simply hired some professional bricklayers and used water to mix with the mortar.
“You’re so efficient,” Risky gushed.
The girl was smitten.
And so was Gil.
Their love burned hot for a while. But that which burns hottest often burns out quickest. Like a match that flares in the darkness only to be extinguished by the smallest breeze.
And when love dies …
(#ulink_8caef963-256e-5e07-80da-e0a026402429)
ack and Stefan had been shrunk back to normal size again by the time Xiao returned to report that Valin had likewise shrunk upon reaching Amritsar.
“Did you see where he went? Would you be able to find it again?” Mack asked her as she shifted back to human shape.
“Easily. He and Paddy went into the Golden Temple.”
“The what now?”
At this point they were outside the airport, completely surrounded by khaki-uniformed men wearing khaki turbans and carrying nightsticks. These were Amritsar police. There was also a swiftly growing number of men in camouflage uniforms, some in turbans, some in berets, all armed with rifles. These were Indian military.
Beyond the ring of threatening police and military forces were regular folks with cell phones taking pictures. And somehow paparazzi were there clicking away from behind superlong lenses.
None of this worried Mack very much. First of all, he was done worrying about YouTube. It was just a given that they would be starring in yet another viral video.
And the armed men weren’t a great concern because, frankly, at this point the Magnificent Seven had more than enough Vargran to deal with mere humans. Indeed, Sylvie, Jarrah, and Charlie had combined to freeze the armed men in place, which was why Mack was not handcuffed and on his way to jail.
This meant that all the beards on all those armed men were also frozen in place. This definitely made them less terrifying. After all, a beard at rest will stay at rest, while a beard in motion may run right into you at some point.
Dietmar had his phone out and was googling the “Golden Temple.” Actually he pronounced it “golten,” with a t. It irritated Mack, as most things about Dietmar did.
“It is a temple belonging to the Sikh religion,” Dietmar reported.
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