The Call - Michael Grant [50]
From the corner of his eye Mack saw Jarrah rushing. She had something in her hand: a shovel. But she was moving in slow motion.
To his muted amazement she didn’t rush toward Risky. Instead she launched herself at Stefan, hit him, carried him down to the ground.
He felt Risky’s breath on his lips. He knew he would die.
Then, millimeters from her deadly kiss, Mack put his arms around her, held her close, and in a loud, clear voice cried, “E-ma edras!”
A small nuclear weapon went off.
Mack’s body became light. And heat. Approximately 27,000,000 degrees Fahrenheit—the temperature of the sun’s core.
Mack didn’t feel it, didn’t really even see it. It wasn’t outside of him, it was him. The Vargran spell had turned him into a creature of blinding light and terrifying heat.
Risky’s pale, soft skin and her lush red hair burst into flames.
The light lasted only a split second, but in that split second the desert was bright daylight.
Bushes caught fire.
The sand beneath Mack’s feet melted to glass.
The animals nearest were incinerated. The rest turned and ran, blinded, panicked.
The gas tank of the buggy exploded.
But mostly, Risky burned. She staggered back, a living torch.
The storm ended in a shower of falling sand.
Risky screamed in pain but much more in rage.
She pointed a flaming, crisping hand at Mack. “You!” she screamed. “You!”
And then, Princess Ereskigal became a pillar of black, oily smoke. Her body was gone and in its place a thing of twisting, writhing smoke, and within that smoke a seething mass of shiny black insects.
Suddenly she was gone.
Gone.
“Yeah,” Mack said as the killing light died out, “I think I’ll do Darkness and Light.”
* * *
DEAR MACK,
IT SEEMS A STOMACH ALONE IS NOT ENOUGH. YOU CAN’T JUST PUT FOOD IN, ALL THE TIME. ANYWAY, MINE BECAME TOO FULL AND I NEEDED A WAY TO GET THE FOOD OUT OF MY BODY.
DAD’S POWER DRILL WAS VERY USEFUL, MUCH BETTER THAN A SPOON.
YOUR FRIEND,
GOLEM
* * *
Twenty-eight
A REALLY, REALLY LONG TIME AGO…
Grimluk left the island continent after the death of Miladew.
He had failed to kill the princess. And so long as she lived, her mother, the Pale Queen, must live as well. She at least was bound for all eternity. Or three thousand years. Whichever came first.
Well, it turned out that three thousand years was not eternity.
He remembered it all still.
His body had rotted. His powers had faded. But he still remembered Gelidberry. And the baby. He even remembered the cows. And he remembered Miladew, murdered by Princess Ereskigal.
Of the long, long walk to his final home, the lightless cave where he had remained ever since, he remembered only a little.
Grimluk no longer remembered the spot. He could not have found his hiding place on a map.
But he remembered those he had loved.
And now, with evil once more rising from its foul World Below pit, he would strive with all his power to take his revenge and do all he could to guide the new Magnificent Twelve to ultimate victory.
Then, and only then, could Grimluk allow himself the peace of death….
Twenty-nine
It was many hours before the ambulance came and took a battered and injured Karri away to the hospital in Alice Springs.
At the hospital Mack’s broken nose was bandaged. And the strange sunburn that Stefan and Jarrah had suffered despite being in the lee of the overturned buggy was covered with salves.
Karri would be in hospital (as they say in Australia) for at least two weeks. Jarrah promised she would call her father and go with him to somewhere safe.
But once outside the hospital room, Jarrah looked at Mack and said, “Okay, where to?”
“What do you mean?” Mack asked. “You’re going off with your dad.”
“Like fun, I am,” Jarrah said. “We’re the Magnificent Twelve, right? I only see two of us, plus Stefan.” Actually, she didn’t see Stefan just then because he was in the men’s room.
“Jarrah, we almost got killed. And I don’t think we’re done with her. Or the Nafia or the Tong Elves or the Skirrit or—”
“No, we’re not done,” Jarrah said grimly. “Not