I swam faster. Could the orb work as a weapon under water? No time to find out! The water crushed me. My boots clung to me like mud. My chest screamed for air. Lore’s body disappeared into the light. The dog dragged me and Charlie out of the water with his teeth. I cracked my ankle on stone. Pain ripped through me as I scrambled up the steps when a snout exploded through the water. Teeth sliced the air. I screamed, jerking my leg away. Charlie lugged me up the steps, scraping me with every inch. Lore stood and yanked down an iron grate anchored in the ceiling. It bashed into the rat’s head before locking into fitted holes in the ground. The beast squealed and swam away.
Shuddering, I sprawled across the steps. The light I’d been swimming toward hadn’t come from any torches but from the rock of this watery dungeon entrance. It glowed yellow with sparkly gold flecks.
Charlie panted next to me, hair plastered in black fingers down his forehead. We both reeked like garbage sitting under a blazing summer sun.
“Your scream was not helpful,” Lore said to me.
“You didn’t tell us giant rats would be in the moat! We have to go back that way?”
“What other monsters can we expect to make friends with, fur ball?” Charlie choked out, as he spit scum from his mouth.
Lore pulled his lips back in a fierce grin. “No time for that.” He thumped us each with a paw, and we followed him up the fluorescent steps. I grew dizzy, and my ankle ached as we wound up a twisty set of stairs and out into a hallway. Flickering torches lined the walls. Lore made a sign to stop. We pressed ourselves up against cold, cracked stone. A cobweb brushed my face. I ripped it away, shivering in my damp clothes.
Foul smells of rotten meat and mold overpowered my own stench. My every sense was on alert waiting for guards to come pounding toward us. Ahead, thick bars covered doorways to cells.
Lore stepped out in the middle of the corridor and padded silently ahead as Charlie and I sneaked behind. I peered into each empty cell we passed, hoping to see my friend Apollo, grating my teeth with each pling of water seeping from the ceiling. Something rustled. A chain clinked. Then a moan had me running toward the closest cell. There in the shadows huddled a lump in a bed of straw.
I clenched the bars. “Sam? I mean … King Apollo?” I whispered, calling him for the first time by his new name as king.
The lump lifted his head. It was him! His pale face and white hair glowed in the torchlight, eyes wide with surprise. He staggered up, chains rattling from an iron ankle cuff hooked into the wall. His royal purple and gold clothes were torn and streaked with dirt. I hardly recognized him through his filth. He stood as tall as me now, and his once skinny figure was now muscled. Time moved faster here than on Earth.
“Joshua!”
“Leandro sent for me and Charlie to get you out.”
He strained at his chains and peered at us. “Charlie?”
“C’est moi! This pooch got us in to rescue you,” Charlie whispered, poking his nose through the grates. “Hey! Boy, did you get big.”
“Leandro’s hound got you here?” Apollo said.
I nodded eagerly.
“Back,” Lore commanded. He muttered a string of words, and the thick iron latch creaked with the spell and slid across the bars. Charlie and I ran in. Lore spoke another rush of words, and the iron cuff fell off Apollo. He gripped my arms, darting his eyes from me to Charlie. “My Earth friends!”
“Let’s get out of here,” I said and quickly explained our plan as Lore paced the dungeon hallway on guard.
As we turned to leave the cell and head back through the rat-infested waters, Lore slid the latch back across the cell with his paw. It locked with a boom.
I rushed to the bars. “What are you doing?”
He smiled, dagger teeth etched in torchlight. Foam frothed at the corners of his mouth as he shook with laughter, sending spit flying across my face. “Whatever my queen says, Reekers.”
“We never should’ve trusted this mutt!” Charlie shook the bars of our cell.
“I trust no one. Why should you?” Lore laughed louder.
He was right. I’d trusted Ash, and she’d trusted this beast. Now we were rat-food—or worse. Time to fix that.
I tugged the lightning orb out of my pocket and hid it in my hand as I moved behind Charlie. Sneaking a peek at the crystal, clouds rolled and lightning flashed inside. The orb glowed blue. Electric shocks raced through my hand. Ancient Olympian power throbbed through my fingertips.
I stepped out fast from behind Charlie and flung the orb between the cell bars at Lore. In a blink, he caught the orb between his teeth and lowered it on the floor. The blue faded, and it returned to clear crystal.
My big weapon was gone.
Lore threw his head back and laughed again. I took the opportunity to try to steal back the orb through the cell grates, but he snapped his teeth. Dank breath burst hot across my face as I snatched my fingers away before they got diced. Charlie and I looked at each other in desperation. Apollo sighed and slumped his shoulders.
I tried remembering the spell Lore used to open the cell to no use.
“Forget it, ignorant Reekers,” Lore said, padding back and forth in the corridor. “It doesn’t work for those inside the cell.” He let loose a great bellow. His howl rose in pitch, alerting our presence to the keepers of the dungeon. Its sound, echoing around the rock walls, sealed us in.
A cool draft struck me. The torches crackled and spit smoke. Feet slammed down on stone, and the clash of metal whacked the air. Charlie and I backed up to the wall in the shadows, but Apollo stood staring pitifully at the floor.
“Mon Dieu, we’re done for,” Charlie whispered.
“Not yet!” We couldn’t fail now that we’d found Apollo. There must be a way out. I cursed myself for not keeping the orb to blow a hole in the rock of our prison. Heavy boots stomped our way, urging me to slide my hands along the damp walls seeking escape, but doom had arrived.
Four guards lined the front of our cell, each with a sword in one hand and a vape snake spear in the other. Chain mail pulled across their chests and they banged their vapes on the floor, the deadly serpent heads hissing at us, ready to strike. Venom goo dripped from their fangs and sizzled on the flagstones. With a collective thrust, the men pointed their swords our way and pierced us with stony stares. A figure pushed through the sentries and bent to pat Lore’s head. “Good dog for guarding my belt. Now let’s see what you’ve caught.”
I gasped, recognizing the voice. The man drew his sword out, pulled the hood back from his cloak, and turned to face us with a scowl on his face. It was my old friend Leandro. His scowl melted to worry.
He looked as shocked to see me as I was to see him.
Chapter Six
“Leandro!” I ran to the front of the cell and squeezed the bars. “Let us out!”
Charlie rushed to my side. “Oui! It’s a mistake!”
“A mistake indeed,” Leandro said evenly. His eyes darted over the bow slung across my chest—the very bow he’d fashioned for his missing son and given to me when we’d said goodbye in the Lost Realm—and he creased his eyebrows then slid his eyes to the soldiers and raised his sword. “More traitors I see, trying to free your king perhaps?”
“Non.” Charlie shot me a confused look, but I was just as puzzled.
Lore chuffed. “Oh, yes, Master; that Wild Child let them in.”
“Wait! What? You let—” I tried to out the traitor when a clear voice called from the end of the dungeon’s hall.
“What have we here?”
Leandro’s nostrils flared and his sword hand trembled. His hair fell in ropes, flecked with more white now, and the lines in his forehead ran deeper. The last time I’d seen him in the Lost Realm, he was setting out for the Arrow Realm to create a better future for Nostos. Now Artemis had kidnapped Apollo, and Leandro fought on her side. Deeper confusion set in. Had Leandro failed in his mission and sent Ash to ask for our help? Or did Ash steal Leandro’s belt to find us and bring us
here on her own? Or had Leandro turned to the dark side? Anything was possible on Nostos. One thing I understood quite clear—Lore was no friend.
The guards and Leandro bowed.
“Queen Artemis,” Leandro said solemnly, lowering his sword. “I wasn’t expecting you.”
“Keeps you and your guards alert,” the clipped voice shot back.
A tall woman strode toward our cell as the soldiers parted. Her head was covered in a crown of twisty thorns, every prickly point encrusted with blood-red jewels and tinged with gold. Her cropped brown hair framed high cheekbones between short curls and narrowed eyebrows arched over large, brown eyes. Her nose and lips were thin like the rest of her, a face more handsome than pretty. She wore matching plum-colored velvet pants and a hooded tunic that fell to her knees with open slits on either side. A rough-made bracelet of polished braided wood encircled her left wrist. Her white shirt was flecked with gold threads, and billowy sleeves puffed out above her slender hands resting on a burnished metal belt hanging low across her hips. A dagger with an intricate handle dangled from her belt. Form-fitting black leather boots laced up her legs and one foot tapped the floor. The strangest thing about her was the black sunglasses she wore. They had round frames, and the lenses flickered alive with torchlight.
She bent to pick up my lightning orb.
“Hey,” Charlie burst out. I shook my head at him but he went on. “That’s Joshua’s … you … you …” His voice fell to a whisper as blades flashed.
Artemis shot him a withering look then turned the orb admiringly in her hand. “It’s been a long while since I’ve seen one of these. It will go well in my chambers as added protection. Did you pilfer it from a Storm Master, thief?” She turned her head to me.
I nodded. I’d “stolen” it from Bo Chez when I’d been kidnapped as an energy slave on my first Nostos trek. I’d grown-up with adventure tales from Bo Chez about the power of this crystal, and I’d taken it then, desperate for his stories to be true—for it to have real power. I’d found out quickly it did.
She accepted my nod and slid the orb into her tunic pocket. Charlie groaned as our last hope disappeared—again.
“King Apollo, looking as pathetic as usual I see,” Artemis said, staring down her nose at him. “No wonder your people have no use for you.”
Apollo stared back at her without expression. “Traitorous kin. Your days are numbered too. Zeus will make it so.”
“Oh, Zeus has no idea what’s coming for him.” She smiled grimly. “Neither do you.”
Artemis stepped toward Leandro, whose head remained bowed, his hair covering his face. “Leandro, how is it these Barbaros Reekers came into my dungeon and nearly set my prized prisoner free?”
Leandro shifted his feet and raised his head. “I cannot say, my queen. Perhaps they chanced a swim in the moat to the old flooded entrance. I’ll have guards seal it off immediately.”
She moved closer to him and raised her hand. He stiffened as she traced the long scar on his right cheek. He’d once told me he’d gotten it in a fight when he traveled undercover to find his lost wife and son before being pardoned as a deserter. “Would you like another scar to match this one, guard?”
“No m’lady,” Leandro said.
She lowered her hand. “Good. Now open their cell.”
Leandro stepped in front of our cell. I clamped my fingers around the bars, breathing in his spicy chocolate scent that brought with it all he’d once meant to me. His eyes, one bluer than the other, squinted at me as he chanted the spell to open our cage. The iron door slid open, and Leandro’s fingers brushed mine before I let go of the bars. For a second, I imagined him joining us in the fight against the queen and her men to battle our way out of here.
“Check the Reekers for other weapons and take the bow from the boy,” Artemis ordered.
Charlie and I soon found ourselves jabbed in a rough search. Leandro stood there and watched without expression except for the wince that crossed his face when his men ripped the bow from across my chest.
I glanced at Charlie, who hadn’t lost his habit for knuckle chewing. He gnawed on one now. Apollo leaned up against the walls with his eyes closed and hands folded. What was wrong with him? He wasn’t acting like the king he was meant to become. Even when he’d been only Sam and not the king, he acted more kingly than anyone I’d known. He’d sacrificed his own needs for his people. Now, he stood a shadow of himself, tired and defeated—like a pathetic old man. Like his father had been.
“My family will find me,” I burst out to Artemis.
She smiled. “No one will find you.”
She cast a bigger stone of doubt in the pit of my stomach that we’d survive this. It fueled my anger. I pointed at Lore, who’d sat up on his haunches next to Artemis. “Yeah? Well, why don’t you ask your pet how we got in here.”
Charlie stepped forward. “Oui! Your mutt led us in.”
Artemis looked at Lore and back at me and Charlie, eyebrows raised above the rim of her sunglasses. “My favorite hound? Never. Lore’s loyal to me and my head soldier. Isn’t that right, Leandro?” She stroked the dog’s ears with her long fingers while nodding at Leandro. He bowed but didn’t speak.
In a flash, Lore surged forward, grabbed Leandro’s sword with his teeth, shoved him into us, and slammed the cell’s gate shut. Before the great dog fell back, he transformed into a soldier who twirled the sword and sheathed it, grinning at us like he’d pulled the biggest prank ever.
Chapter Seven
“Good work, Borin,” Artemis said, tapping the shoulder of the dog-turned-man who slid the Child Collector’s belt from around his neck and buckled it at his waist while sneering at us.
“Thank you, my queen,” Borin said and fell in line with the other guards.
Leandro clapped his cloak behind him and strode to the front of the cell, thrusting his fist at Borin. “You!”
“Yes, Leandro,” Artemis said with a tight smile, spreading spider-like fingers at her waist. “Borin has been watching you for some time as your trusted hound. You thought he was away for training.”
Leandro’s shoulders shook. “Why?”
“You came to me from the Lost Realm with the former King Apollo’s dying wish for you to be my head soldier, along with his ridiculous plan to stand up against Zeus with Poseidon, free the Reekers, and shut down the Lightning Road. As if I’d ever let that happen! I have other plans.”
“Traitors everywhere,” Charlie muttered, crinkling his eyebrows at me. Right now the two of us could only count on each other. There was no counting on Apollo, who remained leaning on the wall with eyes downcast.
Leandro gripped the cell bars as if he wanted to rip them up from the blocks of stone. “What happened to you, my queen? You embraced the idea of change when I first came here! We were on the same side.”
“I let you think so.” She fingered her braided bracelet back and forth. “I kept you, my enemy, close at hand. Borin eagerly used his ancient power to transform into Lore, and you welcomed this gift of a royal hound from me. It was easy for your watchdog to watch you and discover your plans to bring the Oracle here to defeat me.” Her lips set in a thin line, and she brushed a curl of hair from her cheek. “Funny how your plans worked out for my own. Now I have the Oracle. He’ll come in handy. Wait and see.” She smiled, and my insides shuddered as Leandro shot me a knowing look.
The Oracle. She believed. Leandro believed. My mission to save Apollo exploded into something much more, like facing who I truly was—and saving a whole world … if I survived.
“I thought you trusted me,” Leandro said in a low voice.
“Trust you? Ha! You betrayed your own kind by fathering a child with a Reeker and deserted your post as a guard here. My mother once trusted you when she was queen, but you failed in your oath to her.” She leaned in closer to him. “You’ve been following me in the woods, watching me lately. I knew you would betray me now. A traitor is all you’ll ever be. Why trust you now?”
Leandro reached a hand through the bars, and Artemis twitched, taking a step back. The soldiers jabbed their vapes toward him, but he kept his hand out toward her and said so quietly I strained to hear, “Because you trusted me once with your heart and soul as a confidant.”
“As a princess, you betrayed me then too!” The torchlight flared across Artemis’s sunglasses.
Leandro let his hand fall at her anger. “Your mother assigned me as a work camp guard to keep me from you when our friendship was discovered. Not my fault.”
“No, but falling in love with a Reeker was. You were the closest thing I ever had to a brother.” She paused. “You never came back for me.”
“I left to find my family.”
“I was your family first.”
Leandro bent his head and sighed. “I’m so sorry … Temi.”
Artemis trembled at his nickname for her, and her lip wobbled. She jerked around to command her soldiers. “Keep Leandro locked up with the Reekers until I decide their fate.”
She strode down the corridor with my lightning orb and disappeared through the doorway to the castle above. The soldiers snapped to attention and followed the queen. Their marching boots soon faded away, leaving us trapped in our rock cage. Charlie banged on the cell bars, spewing French curses at them. If only cursing had power here.
We’d gotten Leandro imprisoned with us, and we weren’t heading home anytime soon. Instead, we awaited our fate, as Artemis put it. What Artemis meant most likely by fate in this land of hunters was really bait—and bait gets dead.
Heavy despair wrapped around me like fists between the sounds of Charlie’s ragged breathing, Apollo’s sighs, and the tapping of Leandro’s boots as he paced the cell. I stepped toward Leandro but fell back, unsure what to say … what to ask. When we’d said goodbye in the Lost Realm, he’d flashed away here to his homeland through the Lightning Gate. Now he stood before me again, larger than life, striding back and forth with his hands clasped behind his back.
Joshua and the Arrow Realm Page 3
