by E. G. Foley
“Everybody, get back on the boat!” Maddox roared from above.
“What good will that do?” Sapphira said. “I told you, they were made for going underwater! They’ll just walk out and follow us!”
Even the fisherman was slack-jawed with shocked terror, backing away across the deck of his boat.
There were three rock golems in all, arrayed in a triangular formation about the hillside. Jake stood closest to the uppermost one; the other two were posted on the left and right sides of the bluff, about midway down the slope.
The monsters turned their heads this way and that, as though assessing the situation. As they stood up, a smattering of dust and gravel rained down from their huge bodies.
“Jake, what do we do?” Dani screamed.
He just shook his head, at a loss. “I have no idea.”
All of a sudden, the monster on the right lifted its fist to deliver the first blow, intent on smashing the ledge where Archie was trying to shield Nixie with his body. Seeing the giant stone arm barreling straight toward him, Archie gathered Nixie into his arms and rolled away.
Before Jake’s eyes, they disappeared into one of the small, narrow crevices dotting the hillside.
When the giant fist slammed down where they had been lying a moment ago, the rock ledge shattered. Chunks of it skittered down the hillside, but the monster had missed them.
Isabelle screamed her brother’s name; he poked his head briefly out of the whole. “We’re all right. It looks like some of these caves connect! I suggest you hide!”
With that, he whisked back into the hole, presumably pulling Nixie to safety deeper inside the limestone bluff.
Unfortunately, Isabelle’s holler had drawn the attention of the rock monster nearest to her. As its unnerving stare homed in on her, she shrieked and dashed into the cave to hide as her brother had suggested.
Dani headed for the mermaids on the beach, taking Maddox’s advice to get back on the boat.
The one going after Isabelle could not fit inside the fairly large cave she had started to explore moments ago, but it reached its arm in, trying to grab her.
Seeing this, Maddox leaped off the precipice above and landed on the monster’s back. It roared and tried to shake him off, but he held on around its neck and started kicking it to make it leave her alone.
Jake watched in alarm for a heartbeat, but then the one nearest him leaned down and bellowed in his face. He reacted automatically, using his telekinesis to fling a bolt of energy at it.
Stunned by this unexpected attack, the creature shook itself but didn’t fall, and no wonder. This Lord Wyvern who, according to Giannopoulos, had created the golems, had designed them to bear up under massive water pressure. A mere jolt of telekinetic energy did little more than vex it.
It let out an indignant grunt and then swiped at him with a huge arm. Jake dove out of the way to avoid getting smashed; unfortunately, when he landed, the contents of his knapsack spilled out. The library books, including The Lost Secrets of Atlantis, went flying everywhere—and the orb dropped.
Jake gasped. By some miracle, he stopped it with his telekinesis before it hit the rocks below.
Hand shaking slightly, he levitated it back toward himself.
It was then he noticed a curious thing: the sight of the shiny silver ball had arrested all of the monsters’ attention.
Of course, he thought, scrambling to his feet. They had been left here as treasure guardians, and this was a piece of the treasure.
Jake immediately realized he could use the orb to lead the monsters away from his friends. Using his telekinesis, he brought the orb back into his hands, then held it up and taunted the nearest rock golem with it. “Oh, you like this shiny bauble, do you? You want this, boy? Fetch!”
“Jake, the boat!” Dani suddenly shouted.
When he glanced down at her, loath to take his eyes off the monster glaring at him from a few feet away, she pointed frantically across the cove at the golem on the right, which had just given up on trying to dig Archie and Nixie out of their little rabbit hole.
Instead, it picked up a boulder in frustration and raised it over its head, about to hurl it at the fishing boat.
Jake scowled. He had no intention of getting stranded on this little island. Glad he had been practicing working with his talent, he raised his hand and let fly another mighty gust of power from his palm, using all his concentration to deflect the stone missile away from the boat.
Thankfully, it landed in the shallows—but sent up a huge plume of water, which promptly drenched the princesses.
Jake gasped at his blunder as the sisters immediately fell, screaming, to the ground, subjected without warning to the painful change back into mermaids.
Writhing, helpless, on the shingle, unable to escape without legs, and too far from the water to wriggle away, there was nothing they could do as the monster who had flung the boulder at the boat tilted its head, as though intrigued by the girls’ strange reaction.
It stepped down, leaving its spot on the hillside, and began pounding down toward the sisters. Jake watched in horror, too far away to help.
Maddox was closer, but at that very moment, he was still on the second golem’s back. Indeed, at that moment, the brute flung him off its shoulders and sent him crashing into some rocks.
Just as the monster approached the sisters, its intent clear, Dani launched into motion.
“No,” Jake breathed.
The golem lifted its giant foot over the screaming mermaids, eager to crush them, when Dani ran right at it down the beach, waving her arms and shouting to distract the monster. “Hey, ugly! Here! Look at me!”
Jake stared in sickened disbelief as the rookery lass drew its attention to herself. This gave the mermaids the chance they needed to begin rolling over the sharp gravel toward the water, but Jake barely paid attention.
He could not take his eyes off Dani O’Dell doing the bravest, stupidest, noblest thing he had ever seen.
And something in him broke, watching her risk her neck for a girl she didn’t even like.
He knew then that she was already more a Lightrider than he’d ever be. She didn’t even have to try.
It was just…who she was.
He couldn’t tear his gaze off her, but from the corner of his eye, he saw Maddox sit up and shake his head as if to clear it. He was bloodied from being thrown off the monster’s back, but he did not look seriously hurt.
“What the blazes is she doing?” he uttered. Then even Maddox screamed in dread when Dani tripped and fell on the gravel, as she had done before.
The monster was already upon her, lifting its foot to smash her into jelly. Terror stamped on her face, Dani scrambled backward in a crab walk, leaning on her hands.
A gust of rage unlike anything Jake had ever felt before rose up from the very marrow of his bones and flowed out of his fingertips. A barbaric war cry of fury rivaling the Gryphon’s own tore from his lips, and the bolt of telekinetic energy he had unleashed hit the creature before it could carry out the blow.
Dani shrieked, ducked, and covered her head as the rock monster exploded completely, raining down around her in a cloud of dust and gravel.
The other two monsters stopped and stared in confusion.
Jake’s heart pounded, the world spiraled dizzily around him as the blood pumped in his veins; in the next second, he felt as though all the strength had gone out of him.
Totally drained.
The other two monsters seemed perplexed. Momentarily distracted, they stared at the spot where their comrade had stood mere seconds ago.
“I’m going to wring her neck,” Jake heard Maddox mutter, jumping to his feet and dusting himself off.
Jake tried to focus, and suddenly remembered the effect the orb had had on the monsters. “You all right, carrot?” he shouted unsteadily.
“Aye!” Dani got up, wobbling visibly after that.
It was as though his own burst of effort had shattered the hold of Sa
pphira’s sea magic over him. For he saw now beyond a shadow of a doubt that the little redhead was more of a true princess than the lying mer-girl would ever be.
And the realization turned his world upside down.
“Jake!” Maddox yelled while he stared at Dani brushing herself off. “Are you all right?”
He blinked out of his daze. “Fine. Get everyone onto the boat and get out of here. I’ll join you shortly.” Jake thrust Dani out of his mind or he wouldn’t be able to function at all.
Instead, he took a deep breath and gathered up all his strength, then began levitating the orb, sending it floating back and forth over the two remaining golems’ big block heads. “Hoy! Look at this shiny bauble! Ain’t it pretty? Bet you’d like to get your big, ugly hands on that!”
A bizarre game of keep-away ensued as he made the orb dance and dart and hover, teasing the monsters with it until they forgot all about his friends.
Climbing and concentrating simultaneously, he guided the orb up the slope toward the Cyclops’ Crown while Maddox pulled Isabelle out of the cave by her hand and hurried her down to the beach.
There he dashed about, getting the stranded mermaids onto the boat. Isabelle collected Dani and steadied her after her brush with doom with a quick hug, while Maddox carried Liliana out to the boat.
He cut off the fisherman’s bewildered questions with a curt order to start the engine. He took off his coat and tossed it to Liliana so she could dry herself and turn back into a human. But when he ran back out across the boulders for Sapphira, Isabelle balked at his order to go aboard.
“I can’t leave without my brother!”
“We’ll come back for him and Nixie. They’re safe for now!”
“You don’t know that!” Isabelle retorted. “Just give me a moment. I’ll find them!”
“I’ll help—”
“No, Dani! That was too close. Follow Maddox to the boat.”
“Do as she says!” Jake bellowed from the heights, following their exchange even as he led the monsters higher and higher toward the ridge.
The brutish pair were now totally fixated on the orb.
Meanwhile, Isabelle ran to the lowest cave on the right and poked her head in. “Archie! You can come out now! Hurry!”
The fishing boat’s engines rumbled back to life, but even so, Jake could hear her voice echoing through the inside of the mountain. Traces of it traveled out of various nearby holes around him.
But he kept his focus on luring the two remaining monsters to climb up onto the ridge, his intent that the fairly clumsy creatures should lose their balance and fall down the other side, where they would hopefully break into pieces.
Feeling weaker by the second after the huge blast of power he had emitted in exploding the other golem, he could not bear to face what his reaction in that moment might actually mean—though it clearly had something to do with how he really felt about Dani.
Refusing to ponder it, he concentrated on the task at hand, already feeling nauseated and headachy, like he used to get when he had first come into his powers and had not yet learned how to control them.
The wind was picking up as he neared the summit of the bluff. He gripped sharp handholds, but only with his left hand. His right was engaged in the delicate work of keeping the orb aloft.
The rock monsters were getting increasingly frustrated with their inability to catch it as it darted by above their heads. They swatted at it and nearly fell a few times trying to grab it out of the air.
From the corner of his eye just then, Jake noticed that Isabelle had found Archie and Nixie. Brother and sister came out of the bottom cave on the right, supporting Nixie between them as they hurried toward the boat.
Maddox went to help. Moments later, they all got aboard and the fishermen pulled up the gangplank. At last, everyone but Jake was safely on board.
Jake let himself breathe only a small sigh of relief as the fishing boat pulled up anchor and began chugging out to sea.
With his friends out of harm’s way, it was time to end this giant-sized game of keep-away. All he had to do was get them to the top and, there, knock them off balance with his telekinesis. Gravity would do the rest.
It had better work, he thought, well aware that he didn’t have nearly enough strength left to pulverize them like he had done to the first one. Not even close. Come on, just a little farther…
His plan seemed to be working like a charm—aye, so well that it might’ve come from Archie’s clever brain, Jake thought proudly. Now that his friends were safe, he almost enjoyed goading the rock monsters higher and higher up the ridge. Soon they were pulling their lumbering bodies up between the spiky limestone fingers of the Cyclops’ Crown.
But as Jake sent the orb flying around and tricked the monsters into reaching out too far to try to capture it, causing them to lose their balance, a complication that he had not quite anticipated arose.
As the monsters started falling, their kicking feet and flailing arms started a rockslide. The light, loose scree was the first to start sliding, but in the next moment, larger rocks came free and began tumbling down the slope in a full-blown avalanche.
The creatures roared, clinging to the rock formation at the summit, while boulders here and there began to crash and plummet. Jake held on to his spot near the top for as long as he could, as well.
But when one of the limestone spikes of the Cyclops’ Crown cracked off under the weight of the rock golem hugging it, the whole hillside started coming down.
The creature fell and bounced and broke apart with a groan as the limestone spike plunged toward the beach, bouncing end over treacherous end, and Jake could no longer fight the flow of stone and dust engulfing him.
He pulled the orb back to him with his telekinesis, grabbing it in his arms just as the avalanche knocked the stone he was standing on out from beneath his feet, sweeping him down toward the beach.
He saw the second monster ripped apart as it, too, went flailing by him, trying to stave off the ruthless pull of gravity, but it was pulled apart, its body returned to mere stone once the magic had gone out of it.
Caught up in the deafening rumble-clatter of the hillside coming down, Jake was far from being in the clear himself. Somehow he managed to stay in a precarious upright position, using his arms for balance as he skidded and skated down the slope on his feet.
Near the bottom, however, a large, flat rock halted his speeding descent; he landed and fell onto his stomach with a “woof!” He instantly cried out in dismay as the orb bounced out of his grasp and arced below him, landing on the rock-strewn beach a few yards below him with a splat.
It crunched to a rocking halt on the gravel.
Jake winced, using the last little bit of his strength to stop it from rolling away into the water.
He rested his head on the flat rock where he’d landed and caught his breath for a second. Lucky. Lifting his head and pressing up onto his hands and knees, he glanced around to make sure the golems stayed dead.
He coughed in the dust cloud that now enveloped the whole bluff, but he detected no stirring of pesky rock monsters.
To be sure, Nisáki looked quite different now than it had when they’d first arrived. The Cyclops’ Crown was missing a few spikes, and all down the bluff, many of the smaller caverns had vanished completely, swallowed up in the rubble that had shifted position and slid down the hillside.
It was a good thing Isabelle had got Archie and Nixie out, he thought, or they might’ve been trapped inside the mountain for good. Dr. Giannopoulos, however, wasn’t going to be very happy.
Whichever one of these caves had contained the treasure, it was buried now, and very likely smashed. It seemed highly unlikely that the shifty archeologist would ever see his Atlantean collection again.
But for a few pebbles that still rolled and trickled down the slope here and there, the rockslide had stilled.
Covered in sweat, his chest heaving, Jake climbed to his feet. His legs were trembling bene
ath him, but somehow he made them work. Jumping down off the flat rock, he steadied himself, then walked as calmly as possible over to the orb.
He picked it up, wincing at the dent he found on one side, then put it in the otherwise-empty knapsack still slung across his shoulder. He fastened the leather clasp of the bag with shaking hands. Though he had secured the now broken artifact, the library books were long gone, buried somewhere in the rubble.
Jake walked down to the edge of the water and paused there for a moment to catch his breath. He bent forward and rested his hands on his thighs. In the aftermath of all that, belatedly, he felt a bit sick to his stomach. It had been total chaos, and he was just glad to be alive.
Then he welcomed the coldness of the water; it helped to clear his head somewhat as he waded out into the waves. He splashed his face, and when the waves were up to his waist, he started swimming toward the boat.
He didn’t know whether it was Isabelle or Sapphira who sent the dolphin out to give him a ride a few minutes later, but although he was grateful, it didn’t matter anyway.
Because the only thing that he could think about was Dani. And the wonderful-terrible, earthshaking realization that somewhere along the way, he had fallen in like with his best friend.
CHAPTER 18
A Sea Change
Jake wanted to hide from her. It was all he could do to try to act remotely normal. He didn’t even know where to look when he rejoined the group.
Stop being an idiot! he scolded himself.
Easier said than done. He just shut up for the most part, and she kept giving him “What’s wrong?” glances, her freckled brow furrowed.
Of course, the carrot-head had no idea what had happened to him out there. Jake wasn’t sure himself. It was easier for the moment just to focus on the various crises at hand, like not missing the ferry back to Catania.
Thankfully, they were on it by the time it steamed out of the port at Malta. By then, Nixie had somewhat recovered from the magic that had ricocheted back on her, though she still seemed out of sorts. Her usual catlike, leave-me-alone attitude did not stop Archie from fussing over her.
