The Curse of the King

by Peter Lerangis

  I felt my face heating up. “That’s because I thought you were dead!”

  Doofus. Idiot.

  She was looking at me like I’d just slapped her. But before either of us could say anything, the crowd of medical people began elbowing me away. Dr. Karl was shouting orders. All kinds of tubes were being hooked up to Aly’s arms.

  I backed away, standing with Cass. “Boj emosewa,” he said.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  I took a deep breath. I felt a million things. Happiness. Relief. Embarrassment. Pride. I could finally feel my body relaxing. That was when I opened my clenched palm and looked at the shard.

  It was the size of a quarter.

  And the only thing I felt was scared.

  “What if it just . . . vanishes?” Cass paced back and forth in our hotel room. Behind him was a huge picture window. The sunset looked like an egg yolk spreading on the Pacific Ocean. “We use up its power, it gets smaller and smaller, and then, poof, it’s gone?”

  “I wasn’t expecting it to shrink like that,” I said.

  “Jack, it’s been getting smaller all along,” Cass said. “I tried to tell you that back home. It must be like a battery. You and I used up some of its power. Aly used up a lot more.”

  “We have to preserve it somehow,” I said. “But we can’t exactly hide it away. It’s buying us time.”

  “I wish we could contact the KI,” Cass said with a sigh. “I wish we hadn’t been cut off like that. Don’t you think that’s weird—they take Torquin away and then . . . radio silence?”

  “Maybe they’ve given up on us,” I said.

  Cass flopped on one of the double beds and stared out the window. “Now you sound like me.”

  I could feel my phone vibrating in my pocket. Aly was calling. “Hello?” I said.

  “I’m bored,” Aly’s voice piped up.

  I put her on speaker. “Hi, Bored. I’m Jack. Cass is here, too. How are you feeling?”

  “Good,” she replied. “Too good to be sitting here in the dark in a hospital room. The doctors have finally stopped coming in and gawking. They’re talking about releasing me tomorrow. I’m like the Miracle Girl. I feel like an exhibit at the Museum of Natural Hysteria, and I’m tired of talking. So it’s your turn, Jack. You know what happened to me, and I want you to tell me now.”

  I explained it all—the shards, the shrinkage, the healing power, the trip to LA, and my stunt with the Loculus of Invisibility.

  When I was done, the phone fell quiet for a long moment. “Um, are you still awake?” I finally said.

  “That silence,” she said, “is the sound of my mind being blown. Do you realize what this means? If your two shards fused like that, we may be able to put the whole thing together again.”

  “Like Humpty Dumpty!” Cass added.

  “Which means we have to get to the other pieces,” Aly went on.

  Cass hopped off the bed. “Yes!”

  “Whoa, hold on—the Massa took the other pieces,” I said. “They’re probably back on the island right now, trying to fit them together.”

  “Exactly,” Aly said. “So there are two possibilities. They manage to do it, and they realize there’s a piece missing. In which case they will be coming after us.”

  “Or?” I said.

  “Or they won’t be able to do anything with those shards at all,” she said, “because you guys are G7W and they’re not. Don’t forget, the Loculi get their power from us. Without us, there’s a good chance those shards will just be shards.”

  “You are a genius,” Cass said.

  “How do we get to the island?” I said. “My dad can get us anywhere from Chicago to Kathmandu in a private plane. But even he can’t get to an island shielded from detection. Torquin’s the only person who can get us there, and he’s gone.”

  “It’s findable by the KI, and by the Massa,” Aly said. “If they can do it, so can we.”

  “How?” Cass asked.

  “I’m thinking,” Aly said.

  I was thinking, too. I was thinking about Brother Dimitrios and my mom, heading across the ocean. Dimitrios was probably happy to have the Loculus pieces. Maybe the Massa couldn’t fuse the shards, but they could try to fit them together like puzzle pieces. Would Dimitrios find out that Mom had dropped one? What would happen to her if he did?

  I began to sweat. Even now, I wasn’t sure which side Mom was on. She seemed to want to help us. Which would make her a mole inside the Massa organization. But she had left Dad and me to join them—faked her own death and kept it secret all these years. How could I trust her? How could I not trust my own mom?

  My mind was firing in all directions. I pictured Mom on a plane with the Massa, staring out the window, scared.

  “The Massa,” I said. “Somehow we have to get the Massa to take us there.”

  “Are you crazy?” Cass said. “We just risked our lives escaping them!”

  “Jack, we don’t know where they are,” Aly said.

  Something Dad had said on the train was still echoing in my head. The best way to predict how people will act is knowing what they want.

  “Maybe not,” I said. “But we know what they want. And it’s the same thing the KI wants.”

  “World domination?” Cass asked.

  “Loculi,” I replied. “And we still have two of them. At some point—probably after the heat is off us—they will come after us.”

  “We don’t have time to wait,” Aly said. “It may take them weeks, or months. That shard is going to shrink to nothing.”

  “Exactly,” I said. “We have to make that happen ourselves. We have to make them find us. There are four likely places they are monitoring right now—four places that have the unfound Loculi.”

  “The four remaining Wonders of the World!” Aly blurted out.

  “I’ll work on my dad,” I said. “You work on your mom, Aly. Explain that it’s a matter of life or death. We get ourselves back to the island and find Fiddle. He’s hidden away with some KI operatives. They’ve got to be planning something. They’ll help us. The moment you get out of the hospital—”

  “Wait,” Cass said. “We’re supposed to sneak away, travel to one of the sites, and look for the Massa?”

  “No.” I shook my head. “All we need to do is go there. And let them come to us.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  MAUSOLEUM DREAM

  I LOOK OVER my shoulder. He is not here yet. But he will be.

  WHO?

  All I know, all I recognize, is that I am back in Bodrum. The last place in the world I want to be. The place where we failed to find the Loculus. Our last stop before NYC, where all our hope was lost—

  The others—Dad, Cass, Aly, Torquin, and Canavar—are nowhere. The hotels and houses are gone, too. I’m wearing sandals and a robe. My mind goes from confusion to panic. Before me is an expanse of blackness, the contours of surrounding hills lit only by moonlight.

  Bodrum is Halicarnassus. I am in another time. And my Jack thoughts are being crowded out of my head.

  In rushes a flood of other, more distant memories. Of beauty and pain. Of deep-green forests and smooth blue lakes, happy laughing families, scholars teaching children, athletes wrestling deadly piglike vromaskis, sharp-clawed red griffins swooping overhead.

  Of smoldering clouds and raging fires, blackened corpses and shrieking beasts.

  Over my shoulder is a leather sack. Inside is a sphere. It looks like the Loculus of Healing, but I know it’s not. It is fake. I planned it this way. I am also heading in the wrong direction—away from the distant silhouette of the great half-finished structure in the distance. The Mausoleum.

  I planned that part, too.

  I hurry onward quickly, keeping the sea to my left.

  I know now. I am Massarym. And I have a plan.

  Not far ahead, maybe a half mile, is a hill. Trees and thick bushes. A team of mercenaries awaits there. They will take me to safety. After my plan is fulfilled.

  I want t
o be found before I reach them. I must be found. The plan depends on this. My mind conjures up an image: the real Loculus, I see, is safe underground. Or so I hope.

  I am scared. But I slow my steps, deepen my breaths.

  When the explosion happens, I am barely prepared for the blast of light, the cloud of dirt like a giant fist. I stagger back. I fall to my knees.

  Then the cloud begins to lift, and a tall, bearded man emerges. He wears a white, gilt-edged robe. Although his hair is gray, he stands straight, like a warrior, his shoulders thickly muscled. His body radiates power, but his face, which is familiar to me, is etched in sadness.

  Part of me wants to run to him, to hug him. But those days are over. The lines have been drawn. He is my enemy now, because he is an enemy of the world.

  “I am hoping you have come to your senses,” he says deeply, forcefully.

  I am both comforted and repulsed by the sound of my father’s voice.

  As the old man comes nearer, his robe snaps in the sea-thick wind. I see the hilt of his sword, his prized possession, jutting from its scabbard. But the scabbard’s leather is frayed and ragged looking. I know Father must not be happy about this indignity. Slowly I sidestep closer to the edge of the cliff. Below us, the waves crash against the shore.

  “My senses,” I say in a voice with false confidence, a voice that isn’t my own, “have never been lost, Uhla’ar.”

  The old man’s face softens slightly into a rueful smile. He holds out a powerful arm, his palm extended.

  I step closer and then turn. With a swift, sure thrust, I toss the Loculus into the sea.

  I watch the sphere turning and growing smaller in the dull light of the moon. My father’s eyes bulge. His mouth becomes a black hole.

  As he dives into the raging churn below, his scream slices me like a dagger.

  CHAPTER TEN

  IF IT LOOKS LIKE A HOAX . . . ?

  TWO DAYS.

  That was how long it took the doctors to release Aly. I thought about the dream a lot during that time. But neither Cass nor I could figure out what it meant.

  The more important thing was convincing Dad about our plan. He tried hard to act like we were happy beach-going tourists in la-la land, but we pounded him with logic and pleading, to no avail. I’m surprised he didn’t drop us both into the La Brea Tar Pits.

  When Aly was released, we had a great reunion, on two levels. On the top floor of her house, Aly, Cass, and I pored over her research materials, trying to figure out where to get ourselves captured.

  On the first floor, her mom and my dad were having lunch. And arguing. Well, okay, discussing.

  “My dad doesn’t love the idea,” I said.

  “He’s gone from ‘Are you out of your minds?’ to ‘Can we change the subject?’” Cass said.

  “I think Mom is willing,” Aly said. “I told her this was the only way to keep me alive. She said she’d already seen me die and didn’t want it to happen again. Give her a chance. She can be very persuasive.” Her fingers clicked over the keyboard. “Okay, take a look at this.”

  “Looks like Torquin on a bad hair day,” Cass said.

  “Is this a joke?” I asked.

  “Stay with me,” Aly said. “I thought this was cheesy, too, but there was something about it. So I did a little digging around. And I found this.”

  Now she was clicking away to another page:

  I took a deep breath. “If it looks like a hoax and the experts say it’s a hoax . . .”

  Aly clicked the back button and returned to the Routhouni website. “Take a look at the thing in the statue’s hand.”

  She zoomed in to the image:

  “A bowling ball?” Cass said.

  Aly smacked him. “What if it’s a Loculus? Think about it. The Seven Wonders were built to protect the Loculi. When we found the Colossus, he tried to kill us. What if the statue of Zeus came to life, too?”

  “So it went after somebody who tried to take its Loculus, stabbed him, then went back to being a statue?” Cass asked. “Who would try to take a Loculus? Who would even know what it was?”

  “Another Select, I guess,” I said with a shrug.

  “So Zeus the statue came to life and went after the thief,” Aly said. “He actually transformed into Zeus the god. And he chased the thief until he caught up to him. After killing the thief, Zeus turned back into a statue.”

  Cass gave her a dubious smile. “Okay, that’s one possibility. What about the other Wonders?”

  “Well, there’s the Lighthouse at Pharos,” she said, “but that’s in Alexandria, which is a big bustling city—too exposed. The Temple of Artemis is in a big tourist area—Ephesus, Turkey. We’ve been to the Pyramids, and we know the Massa cleared out of there. I think Zeus is our best shot. Look, the question is not Is this convincing? The question is Would the Massa think this is convincing? I’m betting yes. I’m betting they have this thing staked out.”

  Before she finished the sentence, I could hear footsteps on the stairs.

  We froze. Dad and Mrs. Black appeared in the doorway. Their faces were grim and drawn. Dad had his phone in his hand. I could practically read the no in their eyes.

  I decided to talk first.

  “January, August, April, July,” I said. “Those are the months Aly, Marco, Cass, and I turn fourteen. I know what you’re going to say, Dad. MGL is hard at work on a cure. But—”

  “We had a setback at McKinley Genetics Lab,” Dad said. “Our team was developing a shutoff mechanism. But it doesn’t work. The gene mutates, Jack. When you attach anything to its receptors, they change shape. It’s like a beast that grows a new heart after you kill it.”

  “That so totally sucks,” Cass said.

  “What does it mean?” I asked.

  Dad sighed. “It means we’ll need six months of new research, maybe a year . . .”

  I felt the blood drain from my face. “We don’t have that time.”

  Aly’s mom ran her fingers through her daughter’s hair. “No, you don’t.”

  Dad nodded. “We’re going back to the hotel. How long will it take you to be ready, Aly?”

  “Five minutes!” Aly shot back. “Maybe four.”

  Dad turned toward the door and said the words I hadn’t expected to hear. “Wheels up in one hour. Wherever you guys want to go.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  GOD OF COUCH POTATOES

  LEAVING THE LOCULI at home was out of the question. Dad and I were both paranoid the Massa—or some snoop hired by Morty Reese—would break in and steal them. So we took them with us on Dad’s jet. For protection. We also packed flashlights and supplies in our packs and made sure our phones were charged.

  The ride was bumpy. We argued for six hours about how to proceed. Aly was still thin and quiet from being sick. But by the time we reached the Kalamata International Airport, we had a plan. Cass, Aly, and I would grab a taxi. Alone. Bringing Dad with us, we decided, would make the Massa suspicious. Plus, it would do us no good if he wound up captured along with us.

  So Dad and the Loculi stayed behind with the plane.

  I was a nervous wreck. The taxi had no air-conditioning and there was a hole in the front passenger floor. Rocks spat up into the car from the road as we sped noisily across Greece. Soon the mountains of the Peloponnese rose up in the distance to our right, and Cass had a revelation. “Whoa,” he cried out, looking up from his phone. “The meaning of Routhouni is ‘nostril’!”

  “Is geography!” our driver said. (Everything he said seemed to come with an exclamation point.) “Just north of Routhouni is long mountain with—how do you say? Ridge! To Ancient Greeks, this looks like straight nose! Greek nose! Strong! At bottom is two valleys—round valleys! Is like, you know . . . thio Routhounia . . . two nostrils!”

  “And thus,” Cass announced, “Routhouni picked its name.”

  “Cass, please . . .” Aly said.

  Cass began narrating like a TV host. “Our car develops a moist coating as it enters the
rim of the Routhouni. It is said that the people here are a bit snotty, tough around the edges but soft at the core.”

  “Ha! Is funny boy!” the driver exclaimed.

  Cass gestured grandly out the window. “Exotic giant black hairs, waving upward from the ground and dotted with festive greenish globs, greet visiting tourists as they plunge upward into the—”

  “Ew, Cass—just ew!” Aly said. “Can we leave him by the side of the road?”

  On the outskirts of town, goats roamed in vast, sparse fields. Old men in ragged coats stared at us, their backs bent and their hands clinging to gnarled wooden canes. Black-clad old ladies sat knitting in front of rickety shacks, and a donkey ignored our driver’s horn, just staring at us in the middle of the street. I felt strangely paranoid. I clutched the backpack tightly.

  As we drove slowly through a flock of squawking chickens, I read the English section of a big, multilingual road sign:

  YOU ARE APROCHING ROUTHOUNI

  THE PRID OF THE PELOPONNESE!!!

  “Prid?” Cass said.

  “I think they mean ‘pride,’” Aly answered.

  Where on earth were we?

  “Maybe we should have brought Dad along,” I said. “This is pretty remote.”

  “We want the Massa to think we’re alone,” Aly said. “That was the plan. If we need to, we can call him.”

  I nodded. Dad had promised to hire a chopper if necessary, if anything were to go wrong. Which seemed weird, considering that “going right” meant being captured.

  I tried to imagine Brother Dimitrios and his gang actually traveling to this place. I couldn’t imagine anyone in his right mind traveling here.

  We rounded a bend, following a narrow alley lined with whitewashed buildings. The car began swerving around potholes, bouncing like crazy. “Who paved this road,” Aly grumbled, “Plato?”

  “Is funny girl!” the driver barked.

  He slowed to ten kilometers an hour as we crept toward the town center. I knew we were getting close by the sound of Greek music and the smell of fried food. Soon the dark, tiny street opened up into a big cobblestoned circular plaza surrounded by storefronts. We paid the driver and got out. I don’t know what they were cooking, but I had to swallow back a mouthful of drool.