The Curse of the King

by Peter Lerangis

  “You’re welcome,” I said. “And we do know we’re as good as dead, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “Not anymore,” Brother Dimitrios said with a smile. “You will be happy that we are well along the way to assembling the pieces of the Mausoleum Loculus. Piece by piece. Except for the sections you have. Which you will hand over now.”

  Dimitrios held out his palm toward me. I could feel Cass and Aly stiffen.

  “No!” I blurted.

  “No?” Dimitrios said. “That disappoints me. I would hate for someone to have to search you. We were just getting to be friends.”

  I quickly took out the shard and showed it to him.

  “Jack!” Aly cried out.

  “You’re welcome to take this,” I said, “but you don’t want to.”

  I explained that the shard was keeping us alive. That if he took it away, one or all of us would go into a coma. “Of course, maybe that’s what you want,” I said. “For us all to die right here in your van. But it would be a shame to lose the only people who can find the other Loculi . . .”

  Brother Dimitrios’s fingers were millimeters from the shard. He raised an eyebrow high and sighed. “All right,” he said. “But don’t try anything rash. Like trying to escape. We need you and care about your lives dearly.”

  “Sir!” a voice called from the front of the van.

  Dimitrios spun around. We were heading east, the sun rising in front of us, huge and swollen like an angry furnace. Where it met the pavement, a black dot shimmered as it slowly drew closer.

  Dad.

  I shoved the shard into my pocket, sneaked out my phone, and quickly typed out a text:

  Brother Dimitrios leaned forward. The dot on the horizon was growing larger by the second. It was a dark car, sending up clouds of dust behind it, traveling ridiculously fast. As the Massa driver veered to the left to avoid its path, the car veered with it.

  I squinted against the glare of the sun as the car headed toward us.

  A Mercedes coupe.

  “No, no, no, no,” I murmured. “Not now . . .”

  Aly gripped my arm.

  “What is that idiot doing?” Brother Dimitrios shouted, his eyes focused on the road ahead. “Shake him, Mustafa!”

  “He’s crazy!” the driver shouted back.

  We lurched back and forth violently as Mustafa tried to avoid collision, but the Mercedes was bearing down on us. I had never seen Dad drive like this.

  I felt myself falling to the floor in a tangle of limbs with Aly and Cass. Grabbing the back of the seat, I hoisted myself up enough to see a brief flash of blue metal through the windshield.

  The sound of the collision exploded in my ears. I somersaulted forward, jamming against the minivan’s backseat. The minivan spun twice, then came to a stop. As Brother Dimitrios pushed me away, I caught a glimpse through a side window.

  Dad’s car was upside down, its roof crushed in.

  “Dad!” The scream ripped upward from my toes. I pushed open the rear door of the minivan and jumped out.

  Outside, I could see one of the Massa slumped in the passenger seat of the minivan, groaning, clutching his bloody forehead. I limped past him toward Dad’s car. It was about ten feet away. A plume of black smoke belched out from the hood, and the whole thing looked like it was about to blow, but I didn’t care. I knelt by the passenger window, hoping to see him. “Dad! Are you okay? Say something!”

  I was answered by a loud metallic grrrrrrock! from the other side of the car, accompanied by the tinkle of broken glass.

  The driver’s door.

  I leaped to my feet in time to see a thatch of coppery red rising over the car’s upended chassis.

  “Something,” said Torquin.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  IN THE MATTER OF VICTOR RAFAEL QUIÑONES

  I HAD NEVER been so unhappy to see the belching, bearded, barefoot giant in my life.

  “What did you do to my father?” I screamed. “How did you get his car?”

  “Stole car,” he said, shrugging as he waddled past me, a black leather bag in one hand and a metal crowbar dangling from the other. “At airport. He was there. I was there. I needed car. He didn’t.” His small green eyes stared out from under the shelf of his blood-soaked forehead, intent on Brother Dimitrios.

  “Ah, my good man . . .” Brother Dimitrios approached Torquin with a wary hand outstretched. “Surely we can discuss this like two civilized—augh!”

  Torquin took his hand, lifted Dimitrios over his head, and tossed him to the ground like a sack of potatoes.

  Two of the other priests were racing away, kicking up dust across the field, their sandals flying off in midair. “Come back!” Torquin bellowed after them, rearing back with the crowbar. “No fun!”

  Torquin dropped the leather bag. With a couple of strangely delicate steps, he heaved the crowbar like a javelin. But my eyes were distracted by a glint of metal from the minivan. I heard a soft click.

  Mustafa was leaning out the driver’s window, taking aim at Torquin with a rifle.

  I ran toward the shooter, screaming at the top of my lungs. Cass was way ahead of me. Directly in the gun’s line of sight.

  Brother Dimitrios sat up, his face taut with urgency. “Don’t hurt the boy!” he shouted.

  A craaack split the morning air. A puff of smoke.

  Cass and Torquin dropped to the dirt. Aly was shrieking, taking off after them in a sprint.

  I grabbed the passenger door handle and yanked it open. The driver swung his head to look at me, his eyes wide with shock. Before he could bring his arms back through his window, I rammed him with my head. Then I reached for the window button and squeezed as firmly as I could.

  The window slowly rose, trapping the driver’s arms. His curses turned to screams as I switched off the ignition key, trapping the window in position. “Get the rifle!” I yelled.

  Aly was already running toward Mustafa. She grabbed the rifle and yanked downward. With a cry of pain, Mustafa let go. The rifle went clattering to the dirt.

  “Cass!” I shouted. “Torquin!”

  My feet barely touched the ground as I ran toward the two bodies. Cass was struggling to sit up. “I’m okay,” he said. “Torquin jumped into the path of the bullet. He fell against me.”

  We hunched over Red Beard. His face was covered in dirt and his eyes rolled upward. A trickle of blood ran from his mouth down the side of his cheek. Aly slapped his cheeks, screaming his name. “Don’t die! Torquin, you are not allowed to die!”

  “Arrrgh, why did he do this?” Cass said.

  I reached into my pocket for the shard. It was so small. If we used it again, we risked losing it.

  “Do it, Jack,” Aly said.

  I nodded. Torquin’s bratwurst-sized fingers were twitching. I knelt next to him. I felt the shard growing warm in my palm.

  I brought the shard carefully toward Torquin’s chest. Cass leaned over the big man and said, “Hang in there, dude.”

  Before the shard made contact, Torquin shuddered and sat bolt upright. “Arrrmmgh . . .” he grunted.

  Cass lurched away from him. “Auuu, Torquin, what did you eat for lunch? Dog food?”

  What was left of the shard slipped from my palm, fell against Torquin’s leg, and disappeared in the grass.

  The Massa priest with the bloody forehead had made a run for it. Torquin was thirty yards away, dragging the other priest toward us by his clerical collar.

  But my attention was focused on a patch of pebbles and scraggly grass. “Found it!” I cried out, closing my fingers around the shard.

  It was the size of a pebble and nearly weightless. I could barely feel it in my hand. “What if we lose this?” Cass asked.

  “We can’t afford to,” Aly said. “Put it in a supersafe place. Like, surgically, under your skin.”

  I did the next best thing. I tucked it into my wallet. It wouldn’t get lost there.

  “Alive,” Torquin’s voice rasped. He flopped the uncons
cious priest down in the dirt beside us. A welt the size of a small boulder was growing from the top of his head.

  Proudly, Torquin held up the crowbar. “Set high school record for javelin.”

  “You threw that and actually hit him?” I asked.

  “You went to high school?” Cass asked.

  I looked around. The van driver and Brother Dimitrios were both as unconscious as the crowbar victim. “Okay, time out,” I said. “This is all wrong. So wrong. But before we start yelling at you, Torquin, tell me what exactly happened with you and my dad.”

  “Said hello,” Torquin said. “Asked if he wanted to come. He said no. Frustrating. Torquin asked to borrow phone when he went to bathroom. Took phone. And took car.”

  I took it with two fingers. “So those texts from Dad . . . were from you?”

  Torquin nodded.

  I lowered my voice. “Didn’t he tell you—we’re trying to be captured.”

  “Um . . .” Torquin said.

  “Where have you been, Torquin?” Aly said. “You just disappeared on us in New York!”

  “And is your name really Victor Rafael Quiñones?” Cass said.

  Torquin took a deep breath. Then he belched.

  “That is so gross,” Aly said.

  “Happens when Torquin is excited,” Torquin said. “Hate the name Victor.”

  Cass laughed. “I hate my real name, too—Cassius!”

  “Shakespeare,” Torquin said. “From Julius Caesar. The ‘lean and hungry look.’”

  “I can’t believe you know that,” Cass said.

  “Torquin with Omphalos now, head of Karai,” Torquin barreled on. “Omphalos gave jet to Torquin. Slippy—nice jet.” He pointed to the leather bag he’d dropped on the ground. “In case meet Massa, supposed to use meds . . . injections. Pah! Crowbar easier.”

  “So wait, you were here to get Brother Dimitrios?” Aly asked.

  “No!” Torquin replied. “Orders to get you back. Meds just in case.”

  “Back to where?” Cass asked. “Where is the KI now?”

  “Can’t tell,” Torquin replied.

  “Who is the Omphalos?”

  “Don’t know,” Torquin said.

  I took Torquin aside, far from any potentially listening Massa ears, and explained our whole story—Aly’s healing, the fused shard, the plan to let the Massa kidnap us. He listened carefully, grunting and frowning as if this were a crash course in advanced calculus.

  As he looked over the unconscious Massa, his eyes welled up. “So Torquin made big mistake . . .”

  “They’ll wake up,” Aly said. “We can salvage the plan.”

  “Professor Bhegad would be mad at Torquin!” The big man pounded his fist into his palm. “Missing Professor Bhegad. Very very m-m-much . . .”

  Cass looked aghast. “You’re not going to cry, are you? Maybe you’ve been reading too much Shakespeare?”

  “We all miss him, Torquin,” Aly said. “But before you get too upset, let’s figure a way out of this.”

  “Come with us,” Cass said.

  “He just drove Dimitrios into the dust,” Aly said.

  Cass shrugged. “Maybe he can stow away? Or follow us with Slippy?”

  “We can’t let our plan fall apart,” I said.

  “No. Your lives most important.” Torquin scrunched up his brow, looking at the unconscious Massa. He took a couple of locomotive breaths, like a bull. Closing his eyes, he held the crowbar high over his head. “Do it.”

  We looked at each other, baffled. “Uh, do what?” I said.

  Beads of sweat had formed at the edges of Torquin’s forestlike beard. “Before Massa wake up,” he said, “you knock out Torquin.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  SLIPPING AWAY

  I WASN’T EXACTLY expecting Brother Dimitrios to break out into a Greek dance, but I thought he’d be happy to see Torquin flat out on the ground.

  Instead he wiped his forehead with a handkerchief, shaking his head in disbelief. “I thought we’d already taken care of that ape.”

  If only he’d known how hard it had been to knock out Torquin. The guy’s head was as hard as granite. So I, Jack McKinley, swung the crowbar like a cleanup hitter. With a loud craaack, I whupped him so hard upside the head that he flew through the air like a rag doll. My brave action caused Aly to swoon. She declared at the top of her lungs that Marco was a distant memory. Because of my own awesomeness.

  I hope you don’t believe that.

  Truth was, I couldn’t possibly hit Torquin. None of us had the stomach to do the dirty deed. He may have been crude and weird, but he’d been our friend and protector. Sort of. So we finally convinced him to use the meds in his black bag. One of them was a tranquilizer that got the job done in a few seconds. And out he went.

  Dimitrios reached inside the minivan. “I suppose I should take care of him permanently,” he grumbled.

  “No!” we all shouted at the same time.

  “Please,” Aly said, “leave him alone and we promise we won’t resist going with you.”

  “Torquin is harmless,” I quickly added. “Now that the Karai Institute has been destroyed, he’s just . . . deluded. Really. He’s harmless.”

  Brother Dimitrios stood over the unconscious priest. “Doesn’t look so harmless to me.”

  With a loud whoosh, flames began shooting up from the crashed rental car. It was maybe fifteen feet away from Torquin.

  “I’d better not regret being merciful.” Scowling, Brother Dimitrios grabbed the knocked-out priest and dragged him toward the minivan. “Let’s get out of here, now,” he called out.

  “Wait, what about Torquin?” Aly asked.

  But Dimitrios was already starting the engine and extracting Mustafa from the window. As he shoved Mustafa to the passenger side, he grabbed the rifle. “Get in! Now!”

  Cass eyed Torquin. “He’ll be okay, Jack. He can find his way back after he comes to. Come on, let’s go.”

  We climbed into the minivan. With a screech of tires, the van swerved around Dad’s rental car and peeled down the highway. I stared at Torquin’s inert body, a receding black lump near the smoking car.

  A moment later a deep boom shook the road, and the minivan’s rear wheels rose off the ground. As we thumped down, Cass, Aly, and I pressed our faces against the van’s rear window. My throat closed up.

  Torquin’s body was nowhere to be seen. A thick, fiery black cloud billowed from where he’d been lying.

  Losing Torquin was like a knife to the gut.

  “I can’t believe this . . .” Aly murmured.

  “I don’t,” Cass said, his face ashen. “I don’t. He’s alive. He escaped. He . . .”

  Cass’s voice trailed off. As the black cloud billowed, the acrid smoke reached us clear across the deserted plain. We must have been two miles away. Even the wildest wishful thinking wasn’t going to bring him back.

  “He saved our lives so many times . . .” Aly murmured.

  In Egypt after an explosion, on the island during the Massa attack—time and time again he’d been there for us. I thought about the first time I’d met him. He’d caught me trying to escape the island and forced me back to Bhegad—even that may have saved my life.

  We all owed him, big-time.

  And we’d never be able to repay.

  I fought back tears. Aly and Cass were slumped against one side of the van, holding hands tightly. “He didn’t deserve that . . .” Cass said softly.

  “I guess he’s with P. Beg now,” Aly replied, forcing a wan smile.

  I nodded. “Bhegad’s probably happy. He’s got someone to scold.”

  Cass looked as if he’d aged three years. “It’s my fault. I said he’d be all right. I said we should leave him there . . .”

  “Cass, don’t even think that,” Aly said. She put an arm around him, but he was stiff as a plank.

  “It’s all our fault, Cass,” I said. “We knocked him out.”

  “He asked us to,” Cass said. “We
never should have said yes. It was the dumbest thing we ever did.”

  The trip was slow, the Kalamata streets jammed with traffic. It was just after noon by the time the minivan pulled up to the private-terminal gate of the airport. I felt numb. My brain kept asking if there was something I could have done.

  By now Mustafa was awake and groggy. A guard checked Dimitrios’s papers but he seemed distracted by messages coming in through his headset. “Better hurry, sir,” the guard said. “There’s been some trouble at the military base and flights are limited.”

  We sped across the tarmac, past about a half dozen private aircraft. “Look,” Aly whispered, pointing to a sleek jet that was being hosed down by a chain-link fence.

  Slippy.

  There was no mistaking the Karai stealth jet we’d flown in so many times. I wondered how long it would take the Omphalos—whoever that was—to realize the jet wasn’t coming back.

  I looked around for Dad. I had no idea where he was right now, but I half expected him to come running out.

  Wherever you are, I thought, don’t worry. We’ll be back. Maybe if I repeated that enough times, I’d believe it myself.

  The van came to an abrupt stop. “Move!” Brother Dimitrios shouted.

  We emerged from the minivan and ran up a set of metal steps to a small black eight-seater jet. Dimitrios pushed me into a thick, comfortable seat by the window.

  I watched Slippy shrink to the size of a toy as we headed out over the Mediterranean.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  MASSA ISLAND

  I DRIFTED IN and out of sleep. Dimitrios offered us lunch, but even though I hadn’t eaten in a gajillion hours, I wasn’t hungry. In my waking state, I couldn’t shake the image of Torquin on the ground.

  For about the hundredth time, I absentmindedly touched my pocket to make sure the small shard was still there. We couldn’t lose that.

  A flurry of Greek words filtered back to us from the front of the aircraft. Mustafa happened to be the pilot, and after what I’d done to him in the minivan, he was not a happy camper. If Dimitrios hadn’t been there, I think he would have pounded me into hamburger by now.