by E. G. Foley
Spooked by all the shouting men, the horse began galloping about, this way and that, zigzagging around the courtyard. Archie tried to calm his mount, but its flight instinct had taken over. It was all he could do to avoid being thrown as the men scared the horse back and forth, blocking it every way it tried to run.
Amid the clamor, Archie heard an odd clomping sound as he clung to the horse’s mane for dear life. Panting with fright and trying to soothe the animal, he knew that, as soon as they cornered the horse, they’d be dragging him down out of the saddle. Things were starting to look very grim, indeed, and got worse when Davy Jones arrived.
Still, Archie squinted at the odd sight of the pirate captain stomping out of the back door with two buckets strapped to his feet.
“Something tells me you’re the one who’s got my orb,” Jones said matter-of-factly when Archie’s poor horse had finally given up and stood, blowing and shaking under him.
Jones came clattering over with a wicked gleam in his eyes despite his awkward gait. “Trying to escape, eh? Come, hand it over, and I might let you live.”
Surrounded by smelly, leering pirates, Archie was almost as frazzled as the horse and could not think of anything to do. Thank goodness I took the orb apart today, was his only thought. Turned out that had been a boon. At least leaving the orb in pieces ought to slow the fiend down.
Still, Jones would eventually figure out how the artifact worked, especially if he got help. What do I do? Think, Archie, think!
Inspiration suddenly struck. He prayed that his horse had at least a little burst of energy left.
Without warning, he kicked the animal’s sides, letting out a yell, and charged straight at the pirate captain. If he could knock Davy Jones down or make him stumble and tip over, the buckets would spill; without seawater, he would suffocate like a fish on dry land, just like Sapphira had described.
But his hope of a last-minute victory was short-lived. The Lord of the Locker did not even flinch, but stood his ground as the horse, spooked all over again, charged straight at him.
Instead, Jones reached up and slapped the horse in the face, much as one might do to make a person snap out of a fit of hysteria.
To Archie’s shock, the horse reared up with a squeal—and he tumbled with a yelp. The pieces of the orb clanked in his bag as he landed on the cobblestones, banged up a bit, but thankfully, not hurt.
At once, the blasted horse went galloping off, slowing to an anxious trot straight into the stable, as if to hide in what it considered a safe place.
“Stupid horse!” he whispered as his steed abandoned him to fend for itself.
The buckets clomped closer, and Archie looked up slowly, past the black-clad legs, the flamboyant frock coat, vest, and ruffled shirt, all the way up to the face with its black devil’s beard.
The captain smiled scornfully at him, reached down, and pulled Archie up off the ground by his arm. “Now then.” Jones spun him around and pulled the knapsack roughly off his shoulders, then sent him flying with a shove in the middle of his back.
Archie stumbled forward, tripped, and fell to the cobblestones again, his spectacles nearly flying off his nose. He caught them just in time, but the orb was no longer in his possession.
“Excellent,” said the Lord of the Locker, wasting no time in opening the sack. But when he saw its contents, he gasped in horror. “What have you done?”
Archie sent the bully a nasty smile over his shoulder, rising to his feet and turning around. “I’ve made sure you’ll never be able to use it!”
Jones stared at him in shock. “Y-you’ve…”
One of the sailors standing beside the captain peered into the knapsack. “He’s destroyed it!”
“What?” the others murmured.
Jones reached into the bag and pulled out a wedge of the orb. “The bloody thing’s in pieces!” he thundered.
“That’s right!” Archie said boldly. “And you’ll never be able to put it back together!”
Jones’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t be too sure. You know how it works?”
“It doesn’t,” Archie retorted. “It’s broken. It’s just a piece of old junk. Believe me, I tried.”
“Oh, ‘believe me,’ he says!” Jones echoed. “Even though you and the rest of those brats have already proven yourself liars?” The Lord of the Locker scanned Archie down to his feet and back up again, then leaned closer. “Tell me, my fine little gentleman, that strange underwater machine we saw moored by the rocks off the beach—is that yours?”
Archie’s face must’ve betrayed him—Jake was fond of telling him what a bad liar he was. He hurriedly shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Really? That’s not your vessel?”
He shook his head, feigning bafflement.
“Aha,” said Jones. “So you won’t care if I destroy it, then?”
Archie drew in his breath and looked at Davy Jones in horror.
“As I thought. Hmm, if I recall aright, when our paths first crossed in Driftwood, you blasted my men with a very strange-looking gun. Was that your invention, too?”
“We found all sorts of scientific stuff in the house, sir—microscopes and beakers and whatnot. I wager it’s his,” one of his sailors reported. “Chalkboard covered in some bloody mathematical equations.”
“So, it’s true, then? Well, my clever lad, if you’re the one who took my orb apart, then you should be the one to put it back together for me. Seize him.”
The sailors instantly grabbed him.
Archie fought them as best he could. “Wait! Let me go! It doesn’t work, I tell you!”
“How do you think we found you?” Jones shot back. “We know you already got it working! Some of my companions reported an unnatural disturbance in the sea outside this villa. Bring him.” Jones chucked the wedge of orb back into the knapsack and closed it as the men began dragging Archie away.
“Trust me, you don’t want to do this!”
“Oh yes I do.”
“It cannot be controlled!”
“Not by a pipsqueak like you, perhaps. But I am the Lord of the Locker. I rule the sea. The elements obey me. And when I unleash this flood, all Nature will thank me for washing away the species that despoiled her.”
“Humans aren’t perfect, but they don’t deserve extinction! I’ll never help you!” Archie said as they pushed and prodded him back through the house. “You’re mad if you think I’d ever assist you in wiping out the human race!”
“Aw, you just need the proper motivation.”
“There’s nothing you can do to convince me! I refuse!”
Jones leaned down to sneer in his face. “Then I’ll start chopping off body parts. Savvy?”
Archie gulped. “Er, perhaps there could be a little room here for compromise…”
The pirates laughed, then dragged him away.
# # #
The brawl on the beach took a turn for the worse as the doom of their situation sank in. Battling undead enemies was futile, for while they were tiring, Jones’s cursed sailors just kept getting up and coming back for more. Jake wasn’t sure how much longer they could hold out.
Then Isabelle must’ve sensed something dire up at the house, for she stopped fighting and turned, lifting her stricken gaze toward the villa.
“Archie!” she breathed.
Instantly, the sailors took advantage of the pause in her defense, knocked her staff to the ground, and grabbed her.
She screamed as they pulled her away from the boys and surrounded her, laughing.
“She’s mean for such a pretty little thing!” said the man she’d just kicked.
“Maybe I can sweeten her up!” When one unkempt fellow leaned down, lips puckered comically, she shrieked in disgust.
Jake looked anxiously over his shoulder, his hands full with the men before him, but Maddox poured on a burst of fury, clearing away the opponents who’d surrounded him.
With a shout, he plunged his bayonet
into the gut of a very unpleasant pirate who had just swung a cutlass at him. Jake’s eyes widened as the sailor fell to the ground with a scream.
Maddox wasted no time, rushing into the knot of men around Isabelle, blasting them back with well-timed punches and perfect-looking kicks.
Isabelle snapped back into action, diving for her weapon, but the outraged sailors had already forgotten about her, enraged at Maddox for the nasty goring of their comrade. Maybe the “deathblow” was only temporary, but apparently it was the thought that counted, and they meant to make him pay for it.
Losing interest in the pretty girl, they coordinated their efforts and somehow managed to pile on the Guardian apprentice. Now that they had drawn Maddox away from his allies and isolated him, they seemed determined to stop the boy they had also likely identified as the most serious threat.
Suddenly overwhelmed, Maddox shouted as he was forced to his knees. Four of the men took him by the arms, two on each side, and began pulling as though they’d rip his arms right out of their sockets—or at least dislocate both of his shoulders.
Another pirate stepped up right behind him and put him in a chokehold. “You’re just a troublemaker, ain’t ye?”
“Leave him alone!” Jake roared.
Sapphira and he raced to their friend’s assistance, but Isabelle was closest. She had picked up her staff from the sand where a sailor had thrown it after ripping it out of her hands.
With a furious cry, she bashed the first attacker on Maddox’s right so hard in the head that the man fell to the ground, knocked out cold.
Jake slashed at the other one with Risker, and the man let go. Izzy twirled her staff and dealt a similar blow to the one who had Maddox around the neck.
Meanwhile, the two on the Guardian’s left were standing close enough together that Sapphira was able to skewer them both with her spear. The two undead pirates looked down at their middles in surprise, but only screamed when she pulled her weapon back out again with a snarl.
They dropped to the ground as Maddox pushed to his feet with a curse. But he stood unsteadily, both of his arms flopping down, shoulders sitting at odd angles. Jake knew at once that his friend was badly hurt. Stepping in front of him to shield him from the next wave of attackers, Jake used his telekinesis to fling a whole clump of the sailors back out to sea.
Some of them crashed against the boulders farther out on the beach, but he no longer cared how badly some of these freaks got hurt. They were supposed to have died already, anyway—completely—instead of existing in this unnatural afterlife they had wagered their souls for.
Across the sand, others were having a grand time taunting Nixie. Somehow they had managed to pry her wand out of her hand and were tossing it around, laughing, in a cruel game of keep-away. They cheered at the random bursts of magic that came out of the wand’s tip as it flew through the air among them.
Little Nixie kept running to and fro trying to get it back, but the men were too tall. Enraged, she resorted to the elemental magic she had displayed during her Assessment and lifted her hands, chanting for a moment and suddenly calling down a lightning bolt that zapped one of the sailors standing there and dropped him, sizzling, on the sand.
Half the men standing around seemed to find that hilarious, but one of them took offense at her frying his friend and backhanded her across the face. Jake gasped; skinny and petite as she was, Nixie went flying and landed facedown, unconscious.
They left her alone to try to deal with Sapphira, who lunged again at one of them with her spear. This time, the pirate seized the shaft of her weapon and wrenched it out of her grasp.
Immediately, he flipped it around, using it to threaten the mermaid princess in return.
Sapphira froze and put up her hands to signal her surrender, fury stamped across her face; her captor forced her to sit down on the sand.
“Tie her up,” the pirate ordered his chums. “Let’s see what her father’s willing to pay to get his precious heir back.”
Jake felt helpless. One by one, his friends were being taken out, until it was down to him. His head was starting to pound from the overuse of his gift at this sustained intensity.
The sailors by now had realized all too well what he could do. And when one threw an old fishing net over him from behind, a whole group of them suddenly tackled him.
Jake’s face was being ground down into the sand. He couldn’t see much, but he felt the gang pressing him down onto his stomach on the sand, spread-eagle, his arms stretched out on either side of him.
“Cut those hands off, quick!” he heard a gruff voice say.
“No!” Jake screamed, spitting sand out of his mouth, and trying to pull his arms in, but the men held him down.
Where was Aunt Ramona’s protective bubble around him now? The blasted Nightstalkers must have worn it down too much. Or maybe she had set the magic too specifically against threats only from the Dark Druids.
Isabelle pleaded with the pirates to have mercy on him, but was ignored. Maddox ran over, as well, but one of the men kicked him in the stomach, laughing as he fell back, defenseless without the use of his arms.
“Maybe now you’ll learn your lesson, boy,” the Barbary pirate standing on Jake’s forearm chided.
“Please, I promise I won’t do it again!” He could turn his head just enough to make out the large, shiny scimitar in the man’s grasp.
“This is how we punish thieves in my land.” The turbaned pirate lifted the scimitar, but before he could strike, the captain’s voice suddenly lashed out across the sand.
“Quit fooling around, you scurvy beggars! Back to the ship. Now!”
“Archie!” Isabelle screamed.
“You’re lucky,” the Barbary pirate snarled at Jake as he withdrew.
Jake pulled his hands in close to his chest to protect them. He jumped to his feet and tore the fishing net off him, only to be greeted by a horrible sight.
Davy Jones had taken Archie captive and was marching him toward the waves.
“I’m sorry, Jake!” his cousin called mournfully. “There were too many of them. I wasn’t fast enough.”
“Archie?” The sound of her best friend’s voice must have shaken Nixie back to her senses.
With Sapphira tied up on the ground near her, Nixie struggled to her feet, a trickle of blood coming from the corner of her mouth from where the pirate had struck her.
She panicked when she saw Archie had been captured, though. It was the first time Jake had ever seen her lose her cool.
She went running toward the sailors, screaming Archie’s name. Without her wand, they must’ve seen her as no threat—just a weak, skinny kid—for they made no move to stop her. “Let him go!”
“It’s all right,” Archie tried to assure her.
“Where are you taking him?” she cried, turning to the captain.
“He’s coming with me, sweeting,” Jones answered. “We’ve got a little science experiment he’s going to help me to perfect.”
Everyone started shouting, “Let him go!”
But the Lord of the Locker threw his head back and laughed. “Not a chance. Like the old poet said, Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven. By tomorrow, or at least within forty days and forty nights, I shall be king of the whole Earth.”
“Should we finish the others off, sir?” one of the pirates asked eagerly.
“Now, now, they’re just children, and I am not a monster, after all. Besides, I want the brats alive and well to greet the rain tomorrow.”
“Excuse me, Captain.” Nixie marched after them, pausing to whisk her wand off the sand, now that his men had finally stopped playing with it.
“Put that down, girlie!”
“Just listen!” she insisted, apparently regrouping. “You’ve got the wrong person there.”
Davy Jones stopped. “What do you mean?”
“Archie can’t help you. The orb’s not science, it’s magic,” she said with great authority, “and if you want it fixed, then
it’s me you want, not him.”
“Nixie!” Archie cried, aghast.
Jake’s eyes widened.
“Trust me, I’m the only one here who can make that thing work properly. He already tried his methods and they failed. The experiment was a flop.”
“Nixie, shut up,” Maddox ordered through gritted teeth.
Davy Jones gave her a wary look. “I know you’re all a lot of stinkin’ little liars, but fine. Plenty of room in the Locker. I’ll take both of you, then. Bring her,” he ordered his men.
“No!” Archie cried, and was ignored.
“Hand over the wand first, lovey,” Jones ordered Nixie, putting out his hand. “Won’t have you makin’ mischief with that thing.”
“But I’ll need it for my work on the orb,” she said with a steely gaze.
“Just for now,” Jones said, his tone indulgent, his gaze skeptical. He seemed to conclude that such a wee slip of a girl could not have posed much threat to the Lord of the Locker.
“Let’s go.” He nodded to his men.
Jake looked on, helpless, while Archie and Nixie started arguing as the sailors marched them into the water.
“How could you do this?” the boy genius scolded in what he must’ve thought was a low tone, though Jake could hear him clearly. “Go back with the others!”
“It’s too late now,” she retorted. “Why didn’t you ride away like I told you?”
“Oh, you’re in no position to question me, after the daft thing you’ve just done!”
“All you had to do was leave!”
“I told you horses make me nervous! Maybe if you would’ve come with me like Jake said, you could’ve persuaded the stupid animal to—”
“Oh, shut up, both of you!” Jones yelled, turning around and clapping a strange breathing apparatus like a translucent starfish over both their faces.
As it suctioned onto their faces, they both let out disgusted, muffled exclamations that it smelled like fish, but Jones interrupted.
“Leave it, unless you want to drown!”
Isabelle turned to Jake in distress. “Cousin, do something,” she pleaded. “Don’t let him take my little brother.”
Jake looked at her and knew he had to try one last time. He could not let Jones take Archie and Nixie–and then force them to help him destroy the world.
