Magickeepers: The Eternal Hourglass (19 page)

“Nick, do you really think you can negotiate with them?” “I think it's my only chance. Our only chance.” He stood in front of the glass case that held his mother's egg. He concentrated on it, touched the glass, and found that his hand could slip through the glass and touch the egg.

As soon as his fingers touched it, he saw Boris. In his vision, Boris protected his mother
and
the egg. It was just a flash, but Boris was somehow tied to the egg.

Nick pulled the egg out of the case. The vibrations of the key made a high-pitched sound. Nick took the shaking key and put it in the lock on the center of the egg.

Nick heard a click. Then the egg started playing a song, the notes sounding like those of a harp.

He turned the lock and lifted the top of the egg.

Inside, the egg was mirrored. There was a blue velvet cushion in the center of it, and nestled on the cushion was a blue velvet pouch embroidered with the family crest.

“Look, Nick,” Isabella whispered.

Heart pounding against his chest, Nick lifted the pouch. He opened it, peering inside, expecting diamonds or rubies or family jewels.

Instead, it was sand. Gold-flecked sand, to be sure. But still…
sand?

Nick furrowed his brow. He tried to think of what his mother had done, what her secret was, and why the Shadowkeepers had come all this way for what amounted to sand. He remembered the words on the key.

Techenie reki i vremeni ne ostanovit.

Time stands still for no one.

Time stands still for no one.

Time stands still for no one.

He repeated the words over and over again.

The Eternal Hourglass stopped time. Harry Houdini would have wanted it so he could stop time and escape his shackles.

But a Shadowkeeper could do anything with stopped time. He could kill someone while the person was frozen, or steal,
or deceive. But the Shadowkeepers already
had
the hourglass with its golden sand.

Unless
.

Nick looked at the sand. He moved over to a beam of light illuminating the case and peered into the velvet pouch under the bright light. The sand glinted and glistened. It gave off a heat like the key. It was magic sand.

What if his mother stole some sand from the Eternal Hourglass? What if the hourglass didn’t work anymore?

Rasputin didn’t want the hourglass—he already had it.

He didn’t want Nick's key.

He didn’t want an imperial egg or jewels.

He wanted the stolen sand.

Without it, the hourglass didn’t work, and Rasputin and the Shadowkeepers couldn’t stop time. Without it, the relic was incomplete.

L
EAVING THE VAULT WAS A LOT EASIER THAN GETTING INSIDE it. Nick and Isabella simply ran. They reached the elevator and took it to the lobby, then raced through it and out the front doors, tourists staring at them in their costumes.

“Nick!” Isabella stopped at the sidewalk. “I’ve never left the hotel before.”

“You won’t melt. Come on!”

“I can’t!”

“You can, Isabella. The world is an okay place. This is the only way. Come on. We have to meet him, trade the sand for leaving us alone.”

She looked at him, fear in her eyes. “I can’t, Nick.”

“You said you trusted me. I need you to keep trusting me.”

Finally, she nodded, and the two of them dashed down the gleaming Las Vegas Strip.

Eventually, Nick turned a corner. And just as he had planned, Maslow was waiting.

“Good horse!” he beamed.

Nick helped Isabella onto Maslow's back and then slipped his foot in the stirrup, climbed on in front of her, and settled into the saddle.

“Let's see if this horse can really ride in the desert.”

“What are you doing?” Isabella screamed as the horse clipped down the sidewalk.

“Escaping. Just hold on!”

Isabella tightened her arms around his middle as Maslow leaped over a BMW, then a limousine. From down the street a bit, Nick heard police sirens.

“What if the police follow us?”

Nick looked back. “Once we hit the desert sands, police cars will be no match for Maslow.”

Isabella craned her neck. “I know I should be scared, but this is awesome!”

Nick thought of how she had grown up in the confines of the family casino. Around them were roller coasters and lights and people and billboards and the staccato animation of signage announcing every performer in Vegas.

Nick urged Maslow to go faster. Behind them, in the far
distance, he could hear the hissing sounds of Shadowkeepers. From far above them came the flapping of their wings.

The horse was tireless. Eventually, Nick reached a point where he could turn off the crowded street and into the desert. He pulled on the reins, but the horse needed no direction. It was as if the Akhal-Teke instinctively knew where to go.

In the desert, stars stretched across the sky. A full moon rose high above them, and across the moon, high up like clouds of death, flew the leathery Shadowkeepers.

N
ICK KNEW MASLOW COULD TRAVEL OVER TWO HUNDRED miles in the desert without water. He was counting on the horse's endurance. He was counting on the legend of the Akhal-Teke's extraordinary breed.

Maslow seemed to revel in his freedom and the challenge of trying to outrun the Shadowkeepers. The horse galloped with wild abandon, not even seeming to break a sweat. Instead, he gained speed the farther they rode into the desert.

Nick felt the cool, sandy wind in his face, and had he not been trying to outrun Shadowkeepers, he would have been excited by his night ride. The desert was chilly at night, and goose bumps rose on his arms. Isabella shivered in her short-sleeved gown. But he didn’t know whether that was from fear or from the chill. Or both.

He drove the horse farther into the desert, but always, the Shadowkeepers flew like wraiths overhead, hissing and screeching with inhuman cries.

Isabella asked him, “Do you know what you’re doing? Please tell me you know what you’re doing.”

He nodded. “I do.”

“You can’t hope to face them alone. You’re not powerful enough yet. You need Damian. And Theo.”

At the thought of Damian and Theo, Nick felt a spark of anger in his gut.

“I don’t need them. I figured out what they wanted. I figured out what the key opened. It was me who broke into the vault.”

“You sound like a Shadowkeeper, impressed with your own power.”

“I know what I’m doing. These beasts thrive on the night. We’re running until the sun comes up.”

On they rode. Maslow was tireless, and Nick hoped whatever spell Irina cast on the horse gave him extra stamina for good measure. The two of them seemed as one, and he reveled in the fact that he only had to think of a direction for the horse to shift.

Nick was exhausted, though. By the time the first rays of dawn stretched like gray fingers across the sky, he felt blistered and bruised, and he was certain Isabella felt the same.
The two of them were flecked with sand and grit. It clung to their cheeks, and made their eyes itch with each blink. It coated their hair and mouths.

But as the sun rose, one by one, the flying Shadowkeepers fell away, shrieking and hissing and arcing high, like hawks, before disappearing. Finally, none were overhead.

Nick slowed Maslow to a trot and then to a walk.

“We did it, Isabella.” He couldn’t believe it. His plan had worked!

“Let me down. Let me off this horse for just a bit,” she begged. He knew how she felt. If he never climbed in another saddle again, it would be too soon.

The two of them dismounted. Nick's legs trembled, his muscles barely working. His legs cramped in his calves and his hamstrings. He fell to his knees, and Isabella lay down on the sand, so exhausted he thought she would fall asleep right there. Nick scooped up a handful of sand and put it in his pocket. The sun rose in the desert sky, painting it with rose and violet hues, not a cloud visible.

Maslow's sides heaved. The horse walked over to a scrubby plant and nibbled at desert grass. He whinnied softly.

And then they saw him. Coming over a rise in the sand.

The monk.

Isabella scrambled up and stood next to Nick. “I wish Sascha was here.”

Nick swallowed but found his mouth was parched, no saliva to wet his tongue or lips.

“Hello, little Kolya, so we meet again.” The monk was dressed in clothes from his time with the tsar's family: long black robes. But he didn’t even sweat in the rising, early morning heat.

“Don’t call me that. You don’t get to call me that.”

“I haven’t seen you since you were a little baby in your mother's arms. You cried then. She cried as she begged for my mercy. I will make you cry again.”

The monk's eyes were crazed, an eerie pale color, and his unkempt beard fell past his waist. His beard was so scrubby and dirty, Nick thought it looked as though wild mice had scampered through it.

“What do you want?” Isabella demanded.

“Ask your cousin there. He knows. Or has he hidden his secrets from his family, like his mother did before him?”

Isabella looked over at Nick questioningly.

Nick pulled his mother's hidden pouch from his pocket. “He wants this. It's no secret. Do we have a deal?”

“Of course. You join me, you give me the missing sand, and I will leave your family alone. You don’t join me…and you will suffer. They all will suffer.”

“Nick?” Isabella's voice sounded panicked.

Nick answered, “He's had the Eternal Hourglass all along. It just doesn’t work. And he hasn’t known why. This is what
he wants. My mother stole sand from the hourglass. Without it, the hourglass can’t stop time.”

“But if you make this trade, Nick, he’ll be too powerful. You haven’t thought this all the way through.”

“It doesn’t matter now.
Mamasha tvoya-to umerla ni za chto ni pro chto,”
said the monk. He spat at the ground.

“What does that mean?” Nick demanded. “What did he say?”

Isabella grabbed his hand, squeezed, and whispered, “Your mother died in vain. It was him, Nick. He was
there.”

“Give me the sand, Kolya,” the monk said, malevolence in his voice, “and I might let you live.”

“Leave now, Rasputin, and I might not kill you,” said someone behind Nick and Isabella—Damian's voice.

Nick looked over his shoulder and saw Damian, Irina, and Theo, standing shoulder to shoulder. He felt a surge of courage, and loosened the tassel of the velvet pouch. “Come near me or
my family
, and I will dump this sand into the desert. The hourglass will be ruined for eternity.”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

Nick loosened the tassel more and opened the pouch. “I would. Without hesitation.”

The monk stared at Isabella. Without his even moving a finger, using only his stare, she suddenly gasped and fell to the desert floor, pale, unconscious.

Irina raced to her side. “Isabella!” she shrieked as Damian levitated and flew toward the monk.

“You will regret that!” Damian shouted.

With a flash, a lightning bolt struck the desert sand near the monk, leaving a deep imprint and a valley of smoldering blackness and stench.

The monk struck back, sending the black, deadly oil of the Shadowkeepers, oozing like an oil rig gone awry, toward Isabella and Irina.

“The sand will be lost forever!” Nick said, raising his arm with the velvet pouch in his hand. With a vicious strike of pain, the pouch fell from his hand and started traveling, as if it moved of its own volition, across the sand toward the monk.

Nick bit his lip to keep from screaming out in pain and dove for the pouch, sand flying into his eyes and nearly blinding him. Damian, meanwhile, spoke words of a spell that sent a flush of water, like a sudden swirling flash flood in a rainstorm, to sweep away the black oil from Irina and Isabella.

Nick reached the pouch, and though it now burned to his touch, he grabbed it and clutched it to his chest. He spoke his mother's spell.

“Oberezhnyj scheet predkov hranit menia.”

“Your family can’t protect you, anymore than they could protect Anastasia. Only I have that power.” Rasputin turned his hate-filled gaze upon Damian, and Nick watched, aghast,
as his powerful cousin screamed out in pain, clutched his heart, and fell to the desert floor.