by Gabby Fawkes
“Yeah, just, I’m tired,” I said, turning away, “and have to get thinking about the whole Romm issue.”
Which was true. I had enough things to worry about without concerning myself with when I was going to ‘share my bed’ with Axel, as my PV liked to so delicately put it. Luckily, he hadn’t been pushy, but still.
The rest of the night, I tried brainstorming and even outright asking others – Kian, Demi, Jeremy, for ideas. Nobody had anything good, other than ‘compulsion’ (Dion’s idea), or ‘get on their good side’ – Demi’s idea, as if that did us any good. What was letting them stay in Speranţă, eat all our food, create random bonfires and just be generally obnoxious, if not ‘getting on their good side’?
By nighttime I’d given up and resigned myself to the fact that we’d just have to threaten them. There was no other way. So, with that settled, I actually fell asleep soundly, for the first time in what seemed like weeks.
I awoke cold, shivering and covered in sweat.
Do. Not. my PV spat.
-Bad dream? I asked it.
No, but it will be a bad reality if you don’t get your ass in gear.
-Woah, hold up, I responded.
I got up, peering in the gloom, but seeing nothing.
-What’s up?
Entrance hall. Queen Dethfertiti Tomb. Now. PV hissed.
I paused. While my PV wasn’t exactly what you would call sane or rational, it had yet to get me out of bed without reason. Plus sending me to a specific tomb? Something had to be up.
I clambered out of bed. As quickly and quietly as I could, I crept out of my room. As I began padding down the stone hallway, another set of footsteps joined me. Whirling around, I saw Axel and Apollo, their faces grim.
“What is it?” I whispered.
“You tell me,” Apollo replied, holding up a candle to get a better look at me. “What are you doing up and out?”
I bit my lip.
Voicing my suspicions probably wasn’t a good idea. After all, the Romms hadn’t actually tried to steal the gold… yet.
“Just out for a nice, quiet, nighttime stroll,” I said, hopefully. “Alone?”
Maybe if I caught the Romms at it, I could reason with them, strike a bargain. Which would be a lot easier if I didn’t have Axel and Apollo going all self-righteous ape on me.
“Good,” Axel said. “We’ll join you.”
I dodged his oncoming arm. “Miss the part where I said alone?”
“Miss the part where we said we don’t care?” Axel said. In the dark, his eyes were unyielding coals. “We’re coming, and that’s final.”
Go, PV hissed. Fast. Now. Burn them. Burn them all.
Yeah, no time to stick around arguing. Whatever Apollo, Axel and I were about to find, we’d have to find it together.
A few steps into the entrance hall, I knew something was wrong.
“Cu-ckoo, cu-ckoo,” a bird sang, flying straight for us.
Apollo smacked it to the side with his forearm.
“Hate birds,” he grunted, as the bird righted itself and zipped away.
“A sentry?” Axel said, hand tightening on his sword.
Sure enough, even in the feeble illumination from the candle I could see… shadowy figures hurrying out of the hall into other hallways, arms laden with… Something glinted from Apollo’s candlelight.
Gold.
They. Dare. PV spat.
As I stormed forward, my fingernails were digging into my wrist to stop myself from shifting on the spot. Yell and stop them first – shift later. Maybe.
What did these guys not understand about the gold being off-limits?
Apollo snuffed out his candle. A few steps later I strode straight into something that went “Oof!”
A snapping sound. Jules lifted a flaming thumb. “Oh, it’s you,” he said, smiling mildly, “Don’t mind us. Just exploring. Us Romamagi are history buffs, you know.”
By now, his gold-stealing friends were out of view, so he clearly thought we hadn’t seen them and could actually bluff his way through this. Or at least hold us up enough so that his friends could stash the gold.
“Put it back,” Apollo said sharply.
Jules made a puzzled face. “Whatever do you mean?”
Axel clapped his hands and the giant chandelier came on, pouring light everywhere. Including several feet into one of the tunnel hallways where Romms were carrying gold away.
“Seriously?” I demanded. “We let you stay here and you steal from us? What made you even think you’d manage this? In case you’ve forgotten, Olympians have super strength, and powers, and-”
“Oh, I remember,” Jules said gravely, then slashed his hands in a V motion. Apollo and Axel fell to the ground, motionless.
“What’d you do to them!?” I yelled, spinning to face him.
Raging fire was coursing through my body. If he had hurt them…
“They’ll wake up fine. I can’t seriously hurt Olympians, you know,” Jules said, letting out a loud sigh. “Only, what am I going to do to you now, Tala?”
He began to slash his hands in the V motion again, but I was too fast for him. I jabbed my foot into his abdomen.
My birthmarks burned with dragon-shifting readiness.
Yes. Time to teach this stealing fool and his fool friends a very hard lesson.
But just as I was mid-change, I heard a shriek. I hesitated, letting the heat abate.
“Jules!” a baleful voice sounded.
We eyed each other like cats ready to pounce.
“Better go see what’s going on,” I told him warningly, not moving, all my muscles tensed with readiness.
I was ready to turn into a dragon at the first sign of movement. But I didn’t really want to. There was no way I could ensure that in my murderous rampage I wouldn’t wake up and freak out the other kids. Or even damage part of Speranţă itself. I’d heard rumors that it was enchanted against that kind of thing – and it would definitely make sense – but I couldn’t be sure.
Something heavy clanged to the ground in one of the hallways. Jules raced off that way, with me close behind.
What we saw was nothing short of horrifying.
“No,” Jules croaked.
In the tunnel we’d entered, two Romm men who had been carrying some of the stolen gold had fused into it and now stood motionless, made of solid gold themselves. Another man nearby was slumped against the wall, the gold creeping up his arms. Jules flung out his hands and the gold stopped, but the man’s pained whimpering continued.
Jules turned to me, hatred in his eyes. “You.”
“I didn’t know,” I protested. “I told you it was enchanted!”
The sight of so much gold was making my head spin.
It was so very shiny, so very incredibly beautiful, and had to be returned to the royal tomb, had to…
“Help me!” Jules exclaimed.
We raced down the other passageway. There, there was another galling scene: three golden victims, two women and a man with their mouths twisted in silent eternal screams.
Jules moved quickly, his spells saving a woman whose arms were all gold, and a man whose chest was.
Then he turned to the full-gold others, his face contorted almost unrecognizably as he lashed out with more spells. Different blasts and beams of light slammed into the gold – and fizzled. Red light, a blue swish of wind. One of his spells even changed the gold statues– made them a bit more skin-color. (Fool butcher of beauty! PV hissed). But nothing worked. The Romms stayed immobile golden statues. They were gone.
Even with my mind overawed and fuzzy from all the gold – gold, shiny, beautiful, gorgeous gold, I still shuddered. Back in those chambers, hadn’t I seen golden animals and figures, even full-sized people?
Ugh.
I hadn’t thought those were actually people, but… Was that where some of all that gold came from? Was this another type of torture the Phoenix dragons reserved for their enemies?
“I thought… with
mucho riches like this, we’d live like kings for centuries.” Jules’ voice was so deadened, I had to turn and look to be sure it was him speaking. He was slumped on the ground, his head hanging with his dreadlocks crowding his face. “I thought we could just live, keep to ourselves and enjoy, and…”
“Jules,” Milsindra said sharply, rushing in, “what happened?”
“You were right,” he croaked. “We should’ve never…” He flung her a beseeching look, then away. “The ones who touched the gold, they… I’m so sorry.”
“I’m sorry too,” I said, backing away. “I had no idea the enchantments were so... horrible.”
Jules said nothing. Milsindra was inspecting the golden others with abrupt movements, adding a few spells of her own which only fizzled too.
Forcing my feet to move, I went into the hallway to go back to my room.
Right now, I needed… I didn’t know. Just not to be there anymore.
“Are you okay?” Demi said as she and Kian rushed over.
“How did you…” I asked.
“Not all of us can sleep through WWIII,” Kian reminded me.
“Did you guys see?” I asked.
They nodded direly as Persephone strode over to join us.
“Serves them right,” she said grumpily.
“How can you say that?” Demi asked, aghast.
“You forget where I’m from, Mother,” Persephone said. “In the Underworld, it’s a lot worse. In Olympus too. Did you know Zeus killed his own dad– Cronus? I mean, don’t get me wrong, what happened to those Romms was horrible. But we did warn them.”
“Not about that,” I argued, falling silent.
No, screw Persephone and screw what she said. Some of those Romms had been just following orders, probably hadn’t even heard the warning I’d issued to Jules. They’d had no clue what they were in for.
Pa-pada-pum-pada-pum-pada-pum-pada-pum-pada-pum-pada-pum-pada-pum-pum-pum
I froze.
“Is that…” Demi said.
“Drums?” Kian said, already headed toward the entrance hall, where they were coming from.
Her face was the most bloodless of all. These were her family, kinda, after all. No matter how screwed up they were, they were blood.
In the entrance hall, there was a raging, black-flamed bonfire. Already, some Romms were piling the golden people inside, while others paced in different directions, bumping into each other and muttering words in different languages. I caught some Spanish, some English and something else I didn’t recognize.
The two half-golden people were slumped at the side of the room, watching the proceedings with empty, glittering eyes reflecting the flames. Jules and Milsindra had come from the other hallway to join. Milsindra joined. Jules didn’t.
“Think it’s a funeral,” Sammy said sadly, standing at the outskirts too. “God, it’s horrible.” She wandered away again.
Guess my friends weren’t the only ones the commotion had woken up. And that I wasn’t the only one disturbed by the funeral.
But where was Axel? Just as I was turning to find him, he found me.
“Come on,” he said. “Artemis has something you have to see.”
20
Artemis was in the small TV room, remote in hand, face grim. “You’re going to want to watch this.”
“I taped this earlier today,” she continued. “Those weird symbols in the corner of the news broadcasts were driving me nuts, and I couldn’t sleep anyway, so I came here and kept going over it in my head until…” She jabbed a finger at the screen, which showed a news broadcast. “Look.”
Her finger went to the bottom right corner. “What does that look like to you?”
“An O?” I asked, squinting at the small white shape.
Artemis fast-forwarded the broadcast again, then abruptly paused, her finger going to the same place, although the letter had changed. “And that?”
“A backwards L…” Kian said, shrugging, “Okay, so what?”
Another broadcast fast-forward, then pause.
“An I!” Demi exclaimed, clearly finding this fun.
Another fast-forward, then pause.
“A squiggly, weirdo m,” Kian said, frowning. “Just like… in Latin! At least the dumb archaic kind they taught us in school.”
I literally slapped my forehead. God, all those years of Latin and I still hadn’t gotten it? But still.
“So?” Axel asked Artemis. “What does it mean?”
She shook her head, already fast-forwarding to the next symbol.
“This next one, that ring any bells?” she asked.
“Yeah, actually,” I said, “That looks like a 7, so it has to be a P.”
She kept doing the same thing with the rest of the news broadcast. The news story itself didn’t look overly groundbreaking; it was just rehashing ‘new’ developments in our case – basically, what we knew already: that we’d had a close shave in Mathusalem. Anyway, our focus was on the letters right now.
So, Artemis continued to fast-forward and stop, fast-forward, and stop, and gradually, we spelled out the letters. O. L. I. M. P. U. S.
“Whoever did this can’t spell,” I said.
“No,” Demi said patiently, “Archaic Latin didn’t have a ‘y’, remember?”
Artemis kept the screen paused at the end, her look as grave as I felt.
“I think these are instructions for the btsan,” she said quietly. “On where to go.”
“What makes you say that?” I asked, not wanting to believe her.
Her frown said it all. “I did the same thing for another broadcast, and it spelt out Boucher Forest, where the btsan were last seen.”
Axel wasn’t so convinced. “So what, each of the btsan just has a nice iPhone so they can get messages from whoever’s controlling them?”
“No,” Artemis said. “But think, the news is broadcast everywhere – phones, TVs. And this way whoever’s controlling the btsan never has to actually directly meet with them and risk being found out. It’s smart, when you think about it – whoever’s in charge just broadcasts their instructions in plain sight, and their followers just have to look in the right place to get their orders.”
“And maybe even for us,” I said, a sick feeling in my stomach. “Our school, that could have been part of it – preparing us so we could get instructions eventually. This way almost no one would notice, either. I mean, how many people know the archaic Latin alphabet?”
“This person, whoever they are, must have tentacles everywhere, to insert those symbols in a news broadcast like that,” Axel said.
Kian, who had been standing stock-still, staring at the screen like the rest of us, took out her lip gloss and then shoved it back in her pocket. “But Olympus for the btsan’s next target? No way. Because that means-”
“They wouldn’t dare attack,” Axel agreed, with one certain nod.
“They may already have,” Artemis said sadly. “Look at this.”
She flicked to another channel’s story from earlier today. This one was a reggie station. It was reporting on what was supposedly a stormy gray – and extremely unseasonable – hurricane that was on a direct course for Mount Olympus, but what I made out was the biggest swarm of gargoyles I’d ever seen.
Just like when my friends and I had seen the dead dragons in the supposed wildfire back on the TV at the School for the Different.
“Gargoyles,” I hissed. “Why?”
“We don’t know,” Apollo said, joining us. “Minutes ago, we sent Aphie to go warn Hera.” Clearly, he and Axel had been quickly revived after being hit by Jules’ spell, and been busy.
“Those two have never been on good terms,” he continued, “but we’re hoping Aphie can get through to her, make her see the danger.” His hand instinctively tightened on his gold and silver sword. “Hera is — always has been — far too proud for her own good. She cannot afford to be this time.”
“So, we’re going to help them then,” I said. “Right?”
“What?” I snapped. They couldn’t be saying what I was thinking they were saying.
“That many gargoyles…” Axel said darkly. “That’s already bad odds for us. But throw in hundreds of btsan and…”
“We won’t have a chance,” Apollo admitted.
“So that’s it?” I demanded. “We just sit here all safe while Ulrulu or whoever launches an attack against Olympus? And what next - we just wait until the battle comes to our doorstep? With Olympus under his command, what chance will we have then?”
“That’s not what we’re doing,” Apollo growled. “As I said, Aphie has been sent to Hera to offer her our protection, if she so wishes. As well as any Olympians and villagers who would accept it too. We have more than enough space here in Speranţă.”
I exhaled, not missing how my PV snorted derisively.
I took in the sullen faces around me doubtfully, although it was Kian who asked, “Why aren’t the rest of you looking happier? Sounds like we have a solution.”
“Not if Aphie doesn’t get there in time,” Axel said. He turned to Artemis. “How long ago did she leave?”
Artemis addressed her feet, tugging on a braid. “About ten minutes ago.”
Axel let out a breath. He shook his head. “Hera isn’t one to run, anyway.”
I suddenly became aware of the far-off sounds and echoes of other people. God, what were we going to tell the others? More than that, what were we going to do? First the Romm gold tragedy, now this?
“So, what then?” I asked. “We have to do something if Hera and the others can’t escape, right?”
No answer.
“Right?” I shrilled, louder now.
“We can’t just go racing up to Olympus, throwing ourselves in a suicide mission against gargoyles and btsan who have ten times our numbers,” Apollo said.
“So what you’re saying is,” Kian said thoughtfully, “we’ll need a plan.”
“Lips,” Dion said, walking up, “I’m afraid we may need to leave this to the professionals.”
I didn’t bother asking him if he’d heard everything. His face said it all.
