Rebels of the Lamp, Book 1 (22 page)

“Nothing,” she said. “Just giving Nadir something to remember me by.”

With Parker close, Fon-Rahm recovered instantly. He threw off Yogoth and obliterated the attacking swarm of rats with a burst of blue lightning. Yogoth and Rath charged at him
from opposite directions, enraged, but Fon-Rahm flew straight up and out of their way. The two brutish genies smacked into each other, and Fon-Rahm landed on top of them with enough force to leave
them both dazed.

“Such heart!” said Xaru with a laugh. “I’ll miss you when you’re a pile of dust!”

He blasted Fon-Rahm with white-hot flame.

Parker and Reese knew they could only go so far before Parker’s tether held them back, and now they were out of options. They were trapped.

Nadir turned the corner and saw them. He held his wounded throat as he walked slowly and deliberately, straight at them.

Parker pointed to the only way out. It was a hallway strewn with rubble. At the other end was a hole that led to the outside.

“Go that way,” he said.

“No!”

“I’m the one he wants. Let him chase me.”

“I’m not leaving you here alone! He’ll kill you!”

“Reese. I have this covered. It’ll be okay. I swear. Go.”

Reese paused.

“I’ll be okay. I promise,” said Parker.

She nodded and turned to the hallway. Parker sprinted away and around a corner. Nadir, holding his throat with one hand and his knife with the other, went after him and out of sight. Reese tried
to go the other way. She even started to. But in the end, she couldn’t help herself. She turned on her heels and followed them.

Theo and Professor Ellison had great seats for the battle of the genies, but Theo would have rather been anyplace else. Even math class, Theo’s least favorite thing in
the world, was better than this. All he and the professor could do was watch as Fon-Rahm was worn down by the other three genies. Fon-Rahm was powerful, but he was also overmatched. He would block
Rath, only to be sucker punched by Xaru or battered by the four fists of Yogoth.

Theo came to the only conclusion he could possibly reach. “Fon-Rahm can’t beat them,” he said. “He’s just not strong enough.”

The professor looked to her own useless hands and gritted her teeth.

Nadir was confused. He had followed Parker into a maze of destroyed offices, but somehow lost him among the debris. The Path leader had spent almost his entire life working to
make Xaru’s rule a reality, but at this moment, blinded by rage, the only thing he wanted was Parker’s slow and painful death. Nadir was a man used to suppressing his emotions. He was
violent and cruel, yes, but not because he enjoyed it. Everything he did was to advance a goal. This was different. Killing Parker was something he was actively looking forward to. Nadir had never
before felt such hatred.

Where had the child gone? Nadir stepped into a destroyed classroom. Two of the walls were completely torn down. He kicked over a desk, expecting to find Parker hiding behind it, but there was
nothing there. He huffed in exasperation.

“Looking for me?”

Nadir whirled on the voice behind him and was met with the hard edge of a Bronze Age shield in Parker’s hand. It caught Nadir on the chin and knocked him sideways. Parker raised the shield
to deliver a harder blow, but Nadir was a trained fighter with instincts to match. He grasped the shield and wrenched it away from the seventh grader. It clanged to the ground, out of the
boy’s reach.

Parker was defenseless, but not beaten. He charged at Nadir with his fists.

“Come on!” he cried. “Come on, you coward!”

Nadir slipped his punches with ease, and with one blow thrust his blade into Parker’s chest.

Reese was watching from the doorway. “Parker?” she said, her hands over her mouth in horror. “Parker!”

Then Nadir pulled the knife from the boy’s heart, and smiled as Parker Quarry slid to the floor, dead.

NADIR WIPED THE BLOOD FROM
his blade on Parker’s shirt. He had killed many, many men in his life, but this death was by far the sweetest.
He would have liked to have savored it for a few moments more, but Reese was standing in the doorway, paralyzed with fear. There was no time for Nadir to contemplate his own successes. The girl
needed to be tended to, as well.

He stepped over Parker’s lifeless body and walked slowly at Reese. He wanted her to be good and scared when she died.

“Oh, I don’t think so.”

Nadir froze. He recognized the voice coming from one of the destroyed walls, but he knew that his ears were playing tricks on him. It was impossible.

He turned slowly and saw Parker step over the ruins of the wall and into the room. The seventh grader was with Reese and Theo, but that didn’t seem right, either. Theo was with the
professor in the other room, and Reese was still standing in the doorway. He could see her.

Nadir looked down at the boy he had just killed and saw that the body was dissolving into sand.

“Don’t look so confused, buddy. You’re not the only one who knows magic,” said Parker, and Nadir knew. Doppelgängers! Magic doubles! Tricks, no doubt conjured up by
that wretched witch who Xaru called Tarinn.

Nadir was enraged. He charged at Parker. Fine, he thought. Now I get to kill Parker Quarry twice.

As Nadir took his first lunging steps, Parker—the real Parker—aimed the amber charm from Professor Ellison’s bag at him. Heat and vibrations come out of the amulet, and Parker
could have sworn he saw the spider inside the amber twitch its legs. Then the jewel fired out a blinding yellow light that hit Nadir in mid-stride. As the magic struck him, Nadir began to rapidly
age. His blond hair turned white and his skin wrinkled. His bones grew brittle and his head drooped. Only the hatred in his cold blue eyes remained intact.

Nadir’s pace was slowed to a crawl, but he did not back down. He continued to come at Parker, deliberate step by deliberate step. By the time he reached Parker, Nadir was so old that he
could no longer hold his knife. It dropped to the floor. With one final lunge at Parker, Nadir collapsed. He was now an old, old man, gasping for air and too weak to move.

Reese hated Nadir, but she couldn’t bear watching years being taken away from anybody’s life in seconds. “That was horrible,” she said.

“I know,” said Parker, taking her hand. “But right now we have to go.” Reese nodded her head, and with one glance back over her shoulder at Nadir, she and Parker took the
fake Reese and Theo and ran to rejoin the fight.

“It’s the end for you, brother,” said Xaru. Fon-Rahm was being battered by another onslaught of rats sliced from Rath’s head. He was swatting them away,
one by one, but their accumulated bites, added to the punishment from Yogoth’s fists and the fire from Xaru, were taking a toll. Every time Fon-Rahm blocked one attack, two others struck
him.

As Fon-Rahm evaded a swipe of Rath’s swords, Xaru grabbed him and gave him a nasty head-butt to the face. “You should have joined me when you had the chance.”

Professor Ellison had seen enough. She stood on shaky legs, brushing aside Theo’s offer of help. “Give me my bag.”

Theo did what he was told. Parker and Reese, with the fake Theo and Reese in tow, reached Theo and the professor just as Fon-Rahm kicked Rath through a wall.

“Where did these two come from?” Professor Ellison asked, nodding to the fakes as she searched inside her bag of tricks.

“I had Fon-Rahm summon them on the way here,” said Parker.

“Smart,” said the professor approvingly. “Maybe I can find something for them to do.” She found what she was looking for, something in a soft velvet bag with a
pull-string. “If I’m going to capture those genies, I’ll have to prepare. Fon-Rahm will have to buy us some time.”

Reese looked up at the battle. Rath had returned, hauling his bulk back into the building with a roar of anger. Fon-Rahm threw off Yogoth again. Xaru peppered Fon-Rahm with blasts of fire and
laughter.

“That’s not going to happen!” cried Reese. “He’s getting killed up there!”

“That’s true. But that would change if he had more power.”

Theo said, “How can he get more power?”

The professor looked Theo dead in the eyes. “I can lend him some of mine,” she said. “With your help.”

“I can’t help you! I don’t know anything about magic or spells or any of this!”

“I would have preferred to bring you along more slowly, but we don’t have the time and there’s too much at stake. I need you to tap into your potential right now and help
me.”

Theo cast his eyes down. “I don’t know how.”

“You do; you just don’t realize it yet.”

Professor Ellison shook a glass prism from its velvet bag. “This spell is a doozy, and I’m too weak to cast it myself. I need you to concentrate on this prism and repeat the words I
say. If I’m right about you, and I think I am, a good part of the power I have absorbed through the centuries will flow from me to you, and from you to Fon-Rahm. It’s the only
way.”

“What if you’re wrong about me? What if the thing on the plane was just a fluke?”

“Then we all die in an explosion of fire and ash. No pressure, Theo.”

Theo didn’t have a choice. He took the prism in his hand.

“Okay,” he said. “I’m ready.”

“You had better be,” said Professor Ellison. She pushed Theo’s hand up so the prism was between them and the genie fighting above them, and she began to chant words older than
history.

Theo repeated the words. Even as the professor’s voice wavered from her effort, he could feel raw power flowing through him. It was a strange sensation, like nothing he had ever
experienced before. His hair stood out, as if someone was rubbing a balloon on his head, and he tasted metal. Finally, the spell was done, and the power left Theo in a burst of purple mist that
enveloped Fon-Rahm.

Professor Ellison fell limp to the floor. Theo hoped against hope that whatever they had done together was enough to save all of their lives.

Fon-Rahm saw the mist close around him. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, drawing the mist into himself and feeling the professor’s years of accumulated power
stream into his body. For a moment he thought the wreckage of the building that surrounded them was getting smaller. Then he realized that he was, in fact, growing larger. In seconds he was a
giant, a colossus striding through Cahill University. He dwarfed even Rath.

Xaru paled as Fon-Rahm grew and grew. “What...”

Fon-Rahm flicked the attacking rats away with the tiniest movements of his fingers. He caught one of Rath’s swords in each hand, tearing them away from the rat genie and casting them aside
before crushing Yogoth beneath his titanic foot.

Xaru hit him with all of his might, but he barely felt it. Fon-Rahm pulled back his fist and let fly. He caught Xaru in the face and blasted him half a mile.

“You were saying?” he asked.

“You did it!” Reese told Professor Ellison. “He can win!”

“No,” the professor said, struggling to her feet. “He has enough power to destroy the others now, but only
I
can trap them, and I only have enough strength left for one
good try.” She looked around the wreck that was her office. “Theo, all of you. Get me four containers. Jars, bottles, anything that can be sealed.”

Parker raised his eyebrows. “Three,” he said.

“What?”

“You said four containers. You meant three.”

The professor smiled slyly, caught. “Of course. That’s what I meant. Three.”

With his new power, Fon-Rahm dominated the other genies. He was so huge and scary that Rath turned and lumbered away from the fight. Fon-Rahm grabbed Xaru by the throat. He held him and hit him
again and again.

“You’re time is up, Xaru. I’m sorry you could never listen to reason.”

Xaru smiled through his pain. “That’s always been your problem, big brother. You never learned that reason only goes so far. Now!” When Xaru yelled, Rath stopped stumbling and
lashed out, not at Fon-Rahm, but at the kids and Professor Ellison. The rat genie knocked them aside and grabbed Parker.

Xaru laughed as Rath pulled Parker away from Fon-Rahm. “You never learned how to be truly vicious. You never learned how to do what it takes to win.”

Fon-Rahm reached for Rath, but Yogoth held him back. Rath moved farther and farther away, straining the limits of the tether. Soon both Parker and Fon-Rahm were in searing pain. Parker felt sure
his head would explode. He pressed his hands to his temples and screamed.

Xaru told Rath, “Not so quickly, my brother. Let’s take a moment to really enjoy this.” He floated lazily over to Fon-Rahm. “There’s no escape for you this time,
Fon-Rahm. This time
I
win. When the world is mine, do you think they’ll remember you? Do you think they’ll care whose side you were on? Now you have nothing, while every living
thing on this world will pray for mercy in my name!”

Xaru slapped Fon-Rahm across the face. Fon-Rahm was helpless to stop him.

“All right, Rath,” said Xaru. “We have much to do, and only eternity to do it in. Let’s see what happens when we get these two a few miles apart.”

Reese’s stomach dropped. Parker was going to be killed. Fon-Rahm was going to be destroyed. Xaru was going to win.

REESE LOOKED OVER HER SHOULDER
and saw herself.

“The doubles,” she said. “We can send the doubles!” She grabbed the fake Reese and the fake Theo and yelled something in their ears. The doubles nodded and started to
hunt through the professor’s ruined gear.

“What can they do that we can’t?” asked Theo as the fakes pulled a long orange extension cord from the debris. They each grabbed an end of the cord and ran at Rath.

“They can
die
,” said Reese.

The doubles made a mad dash at Rath, winding underneath his legs in attempt to get the rat genie tangled up.

“That will never work,” said Professor Ellison. “That thing is too big. Even if they manage to trip him, he’ll still have Parker.”

Reese told her, “I didn’t tell them to trip him. I told them to make him mad.”