“I wish I had your confidence.”
“You do. You think you’re running around with no plan, but you always have a plan. You’ll figure something out. That’s your gift. You look at a situation, you analyze it, and you act. And I know you’ll get us through this. I have no doubt.”
He looked away, out the window at the lava glowing below us. But he didn’t let go of my hand.
Weird. That’s the only word I could use to describe it. All the time I’d been at Blackthorn I’d thought that Alex could barely tolerate my presence. Now he was talking like he actually liked me. The pressure must have been making him crazy.
A few moments later Kanale shouted that we were going to land at Pele’s Point. He startled me, and I pulled my hand away from Alex’s grip. He just smiled again. Yikes! Stay focused, Rachel.
Slightly to the west of the main lava flow was Pele’s Point. This was where Pilar had said the statue was hidden. Kanale set the chopper down and we jumped out. Before he took off he shouted at us to be careful.
“You should be okay here, but watch out: The ground around here is funky. Sometimes it’ll blow, and before you know it, you’ll be surrounded by lava with no way out. I’ll keep circling until you call me on the walkie!”
Great. Thanks for the advice. If only I’d packed my lava-proof boots.
Way off in the distance behind us we could hear the hiss of the lava hitting the ocean and the sound of the steam blowing high into the sky. A few hundred feet ahead of us were five very large, irregularly shaped granite pillars that thrust up out of the ground. They looked like oversized monuments or something.
“So,” I said, “here, artifact, artifact, artifact!” I was trying to break the tension, but they didn’t laugh.
“Okay,” said Brent, “if there were island inhabitants when the Romans landed here, this might have been a holy place to them. And perhaps those pillars reminded the Centurions of a Roman temple. It’s also not easy to get to. This would be a good place to hide something.”
Was it just me or had the normally quiet, taciturn Brent turned into Mr. Blabbermouth? But as usual, when he did say something, it made sense. The question was, where would you hide an artifact in a place like this if you were a Roman on a Hawaiian vacation two thousand years ago?
“But you know what I still don’t get?” Alex said. “How could Flavius know about this place? I mean, Hawaii is a long, long way from Rome. It just doesn’t seem possible that he could have written what’s in the book. He’d have had no knowledge of Hawaii. How could he know what to write?”
Neither of the boys was looking at me. If they were, they would have seen me shudder. I remembered the thing I saw in the hold of the ship that night. I had to believe that Flavius had help in hiding all of his bling bling. He had something or someone telling him everything he needed to know—exactly where to go and what to do.
I figured at this point Alex and Brent needed to know what we were dealing with. So while we searched, I told them everything about that hideous thing I’d seen in the cargo hold. It was the only thing that I hadn’t shared with them. Mr. Kim had thought it best to keep it between us. But now was not the time for secrets. If they were going to risk their lives, they needed to know everything.
Brent just nodded when I finished. Mr. Skepticism, on the other hand…
“I don’t believe any of this for a minute. Supernatural help? Please. Although it does seem like the only possible explanation for how the artifact could be here.”
“Yeah, well, speaking of artifact,” I said. “We need to find it. According to my watch, we’ve got three hours and fifteen minutes to get back to the meeting place.”
I made an executive decision to start at the center pillar and work our way out. Since they were arranged in a kind of rough star shape, it seemed the best place to start. Brent led the way with his flashlight. But after a few minutes I realized that we were going to fail. The pillars were huge and there was too much ground to cover. The treasure wasn’t going to be lying around waiting to be found. There was no big sign with an arrow that said “Ancient Roman Relic Hidden Here.” We were going to run out of time. And we might have if I hadn’t accidentally discovered the power of Etherea’s light.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Let There Be Light
It happened when Brent’s flashlight battery burned out. We stood there in total darkness. Brent shook his flashlight. It was completely dead. There was some moonlight, so we could see each other a little, but not very well. We stood there in silence, staring at Brent.
He looked up from fiddling with the flashlight.
“What?” he said.
“Nothing,” I said. “We’re just waiting for you to replace the batteries.”
“Yes. Well. I don’t have any,” he said.
“You don’t have any extra batteries? You bring a flare gun and half a secret-agent lab in your backpack, but no batteries?”
“Nope,” said Brent.
“Alex, do you have a flashlight?” I said.
They looked at me and then at each other.
“Don’t tell me,” I groaned. I pointed to Brent’s backpack with all the stuff he’d packed into it back at the school. “Are you sure there’s not another flashlight in there?” He shook his head.
Appalling. Of course, I had nothing with me, but I had an excuse, what with being captured by a supervillain and everything. These guys were just woefully unprepared.
“Can’t you use the batteries from something else in your pack?” I said.
“Not the right size,” he said.
Brent was still shaking his light, trying to get it to work. No such luck.
In exasperation, I reached out and took the flashlight from his hands.
“Let me see that,” I said.
And that’s when it happened. As I reached for the flashlight, my hand started to glow. Imagine turning on the headlights of a car and then putting your hand over the top of one. Know how it makes your skin look almost transparent around the edges and makes your fingertips glow? That’s what it looked like. My hand began to throb with a weird energy, and when I took the flashlight, a brilliant white light shot out of the flashlight in a bright beam.
I screamed and dropped the flashlight. It clattered across the ground, spinning in all directions, and came to rest a few feet away from me. Then a loud screech seemed to come from it and the beam got brighter and there was a crashing sound as some of the rocks in the path of the beam collapsed and rolled down the side of the pillar in a mini–rock slide. Then the glow of the beam dimmed and the flashlight just lay there shining, looking like a regular old flashlight with a fresh set of batteries. Slowly the glow faded from my hand.
“Whoa,” Alex said.
“Did you see that?” Brent asked.
“Rachel, what…are you okay?” Alex asked.
“Uh. Yeah. I think…I’m not…I don’t know,” I said. Truth was, I felt a little light-headed and dizzy. What the heck had just happened to me? I stood there looking at my hand like it wasn’t a part of me.
“What was that?” Alex asked.
“I’m not sure. My hand felt kind of funny, and all of a sudden it was like a big jolt of static electricity shot out of it or something. But it’s not like I’ve never touched a flashlight before. I’ve probably picked up a zillion flashlights in my life, but I swear to God that’s never happened. What’s wrong with me?” I was clenching and unclenching my fist, hoping like heck that whatever had just happened wouldn’t happen again anytime soon. I felt frightened. This was a total freak-out moment.
“Must have been some kind of electrical charge,” said Brent. “There’s all kinds of heat in the rocks here, not to mention radiant electrical energy. The low-grade electrical field from the flashlight must have caused a spark.”
Thank you very much, Dr. Science. But that didn’t explain the bolt of light shooting out of the flashlight and knocking the rocks off from the side of the pillars. Or maybe it did—what d
o I know? I looked at Alex, who was still staring at me with his mouth open.
Brent walked over to where the flashlight lay on the ground and very gingerly picked it up, like he was expecting it to explode or something. He jiggled it a couple of times and flicked it on and off. It seemed to be working perfectly. The tingling sensation was finally starting to disappear from my hand.
“I don’t get this. What happened to me?” I said.
“I think Brent’s explanation is probably accurate,” Alex said slowly. “We are essentially standing on a live volcano. The heat and the atmosphere can play all kinds of havoc with equipment and stuff. Luckily it seems to have recharged the batteries in the flashlight.” He took the flashlight from Brent and waved it around like a wand.
Okay. Fine. Whatever. So nobody really wanted to talk about it. We’d deal with it later.
While Alex swung the light around, it happened to sweep over to where the rocks had shifted. As it passed over the rubble, I noticed what looked like a small opening in the side of the rock.
“Hey, wait a minute,” I said. “Shine the light back on the rock slide.”
“Why don’t you just turn on your hand instead?” he said. Then he and Brent busted out laughing. Comedians.
“Quit goofing around. Look,” I said. They followed me over to the opening.
Steam poured from the opening and a mysterious light glowed from within. Probably some kind of lava pocket, I said to myself. Couldn’t be anything else but lava here. This place was like a Wal-Mart of hot molten rock. But now I had this very strong instinct to crawl into this little hole and look for something—almost like I was being led there. So into the hole we went.
We scrambled through the small opening and found that it turned into a tunnel that led back into the rock. We followed it for maybe twenty yards on a downward slope and wound up in a very large cavern. And there in the middle of the cavern was what I can only describe as a solid wall of light. It shot right up out of the cavern floor and reached all the way to the ceiling. It glowed and pulsed with white energy, and it wasn’t transparent so we couldn’t see beyond it. It looked almost like a force field that you might see in a science-fiction movie.
“What the heck is that?” Alex said.
“Don’t know,” said Brent.
“I don’t know either, but this must be the place,” I said.
“Agreed,” said Alex. “Now what?”
The light kept pulsating and shimmering. It was like daylight inside the cavern. I picked up a small rock and tossed it at the light wall. It bounced off and landed on the ground. Okay. What next?
Brent walked up to the wall and put his hand out, but he couldn’t push it through the wall. It was like a force field. It didn’t shock him or anything—it was more like the light turned solid when his hand touched it. He took off his backpack and pulled a little box gizmo out with all kinds of dials and knobs on it. He started pushing buttons and waving it back and forth near the light.
“What is that thing?” I asked.
“Spectroscope,” he said. He was concentrating very hard on what he was doing.
“What does it do?”
“Measures light,” he said. Give the guy a project and he returns to his one-syllable ways.
Brent took the Spectrowhatsit and ran the machine over my magic light show hand. He looked at the readout and frowned.
“Rachel,” he said, “I think you need to try it.”
“Try what?”
“Try sticking your hand through the wall of light.”
“What?”
He looked up at me.
“Try sticking your hand through the light,” he said.
Well, wasn’t there something else I could try? Maybe wrestle a lion or something instead? This whole thing with my hand lighting up and this weird wall of light was freaking me out a little, and knowing my luck, if I stuck my hand through that light, it’d come back looking like it belongs to Edward Scissorhands or something.
“You’re sure about this?” I said to Brent.
“Yeah. Pretty sure,” he said. Pretty sure?
“This isn’t going to hurt me, is it?”
“Don’t know,” he said. “Don’t think so. Didn’t hurt me when I touched it.”
So Mr. Science wants me to stick my hand into a wall of weird energy that no one has ever seen before and find out what happens. If I lived through this, these guys were going to be covering my shifts in the kitchen for the rest of the school year.
I didn’t have any other ideas, so I reached out with my hand and touched the light. Only, unlike Brent, my hand passed right through. I couldn’t see it through the barrier, but it was still attached to my arm and the wall of light hadn’t stopped it. Great. You can guess what this means.
“You need to go through,” said Brent.
“Hey, maybe we can find some other artifact, like at a flea market or something, and trick Blankenship with it. I mean, it’s not like he’s ever seen the real thing. How would he know? I think I saw something suitable at Pier One not too long ago. It would look great in a Mithrian temple.”
Brent nodded toward the light wall, like it was time for me to get on with it. Whoo boy.
I was back to the nervous babbling, and that was because, inside, I knew Brent was right. I had to go through that wall of light, because somehow I knew that was where the missing relic was and that was the only thing that could save Pilar. No one else could do it. It had to be me. Where was Arnold Schwarzenegger when you needed him?
“Okay,” I said, taking a deep breath. “I can do this.” I pulled back my hand and looked at it. None the worse for wear. Still had all my fingers. So it wasn’t going to hurt me. Scare the bejabbers out of me maybe, but probably not going to be harmful. Except to my nerves.
Alex reached out and put his hand on my shoulder. “Are you sure?” he said.
“I’m sure,” I said. He gave my shoulder a squeeze, then released it and said “good luck.” I looked at Brent and winked, and he smiled back at me.
“I’ll be right back,” I said.
Then I stepped through the wall of light and hit the Mithrian jackpot.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Thank You for Shopping at Our Temple
It looked like the pictures of the temple in Kuzbekistan that Mr. Kim had shown us. My eyes immediately went to the golden statue that sat on a pedestal in the center of the room. There were carvings on the walls of Mithras and other drawings and pictures of stuff, but I really didn’t have time to study them closely. I needed to get that statue.
The statue was about two feet high and carved in the shape of a bull sitting on its hindquarters, like a dog or cat might sit when it’s resting—or getting ready to pounce. Red rubies for eyes and what I guessed must have been silver horns. The rest of the statue looked to be solid gold and encrusted with diamonds and gemstones. Which meant it was going to be heavy.
Out of the corner of my eye I spotted something lying on the ground near the far wall of the room. Only, it wasn’t a something—it was a someone. Or it used to be someone. Now it was a skeleton. From the helmet and armor it wore and the large sword that lay next to it, I assumed it was a Roman Centurion. I didn’t know much about Roman Centurions, but I had seen Gladiator several times and the armor looked just like the stuff that Russell Crowe wore in the movie.
So it was true. Flavius had sent his men all over the world to hide his toys. I concentrated on this fact, because if I could focus on Flavius and his mission from two thousand years ago then I wouldn’t be freaked out by the fact that THERE WAS AN ACTUAL SKELETON IN THE ROOM WITH ME! Ick.
I was a nervous wreck and my heart was pounding. I just wanted to get out of there. I was about to take the statue off the pedestal when I remembered something and stopped.
As I like to remind people, Rachel Buchanan is nobody’s fool. I had seen all the Indiana Jones movies and I knew there was a very good chance that the statue could be booby-trapped somehow. Once I took the s
tatue off the pedestal, all kinds of bad stuff would probably happen. A giant boulder might come rolling down out of the walls and crush me to death. Maybe all kinds of arrows would come shooting out of the walls and turn me into a pincushion. A giant metal blade might pop up out of the pedestal and whack my arm off. Or machine guns would drop out of the ceiling and spray the room with bullets.
Okay, probably not that last one, since the ancient Romans didn’t have machine guns. But some of that other stuff could definitely happen.
I bent down and looked closely at the pedestal. As near as I could tell, it was just carved out of rock. I didn’t see any cracks or anything that looked like a secret panel or a hidden vat of acid that would get dumped on my head. Not even a boxing glove on a giant spring. Maybe it wasn’t booby-trapped after all. Sure. I bet. So I decided to steal a trick from Raiders of the Lost Ark.
I still had the duffel bag from the van slung over my shoulder. I took out my Swiss Army knife, cash, and cell phone and jammed them back in my pockets. I knelt down and started scooping dirt into the bag. The temple floor was covered with a few inches of fine soil, but underneath that was solid volcanic hardened rock. When I ran out of dirt, I added a few temple things—plates, jewels, that kind of thing. I had no idea how much the statue weighed, but I hoped this worked.
I held the duffel bag in one hand by the handles and put my other hand on the statue. I tried to time it just right so that I’d roll the bag onto the pedestal at the same time as I pulled the statue off. Hopefully that would save me from horrible death or disfigurement.
One, two, three. I pulled and rolled, tucked the statue into my chest, and dropped to the ground, curling up into a ball as close to the stone pillar as I could get. I waited for the inevitable explosion or rumbling, slashing, whirring sound that would signify my doom.
Nothing happened. No booby traps. I opened my eyes and glanced around, just to make sure that I hadn’t released a giant spider from a hidden cage and it was waiting for me to move before it ate me. Nothing. Whew. I stood up, holding the statue with both hands. It was heavy, but I could carry it. I waited for a second to see if a trapdoor would open beneath my feet or a dragon would fly down from the ceiling and burn me to a cinder. All quiet.
To Hawaii, with Love Page 10
