The Trap (8 page)

STILL A LONG TIME AGO . . .

S
ix Toes Ricotta was the
capo di tutti capi
, the head Black Hand boss for New York. He was accompanied by two of his boys, Bad Breath Caprino and Fatface Pecarino.

Despite his usual caution, Paddy was excited by the invitation. It could only be a job offer. Lately the Black Hand had been growing quickly—more quickly than the Nafia—and Paddy thought he might have a better career with them.

Plus, the Black Hand had recently begun allowing its members to date. Which meant that Black Hand members could go see movies without looking lonely and pathetic. They could go out to restaurants without the waiters looking at them with pity.

The Black Hand believed you could be a ruthless killer and still find love. But the Nafia was sticking to its traditional position, which was opposed to any chance at personal happiness.

It was a beautiful day. The sun was high in the sky as the four of them drove in a steam-powered car to the golf course.

Paddy had never been on a golf course before. It was green and lush and clean. It reminded him a little of County Grind. But with fewer hovels and no pigs.

Fatface had brought a cooler. Of course, this being a long time ago, it was a steam-powered cooler.

“Have a drink, Paddy,” Six Toes said. “Fatface! Give the kid a drink.”

And standing there on that endless green grass with a glass of chilled wine in his hand, Paddy felt mighty good.

“You play much golf?” Six Toes asked politely.

“No. But back in the Old Country we had a game we played called gopher-and-hole.” Paddy took a refreshing swig and almost smiled at the memory. “We'd cut the head off a gopher, carry it a hundred paces away, and try to knock the head back into the gopher's hole using clubs made out of starched pig intestines.”

The three Black Hand criminals stared at him.

“Sure an' it were a grand sport, so it was, so it was,” Paddy reminisced.

But the three hoods erupted into derisive laughter. “Starched pig intestines? Ah-ha-ha-ha!”

“You're really a rube, aren't you?” Bad Breath Caprino said.

“What a bumpkin!”

“Heh,” Six Toes snarked, “what can you expect from an oat eater?”

Paddy's smile disappeared. A small fire was burning inside him. He blushed. Which he had never done before.

“Let's get started,” Six Toes said. And then he spoke the words that would change his own life and Paddy's, too. He said, “Grab me my driver from my golf bag. Oh, wait! You wouldn't recognize a driver, would you? It's not the same as a pig intestine. Ha-ha-ha. You wouldn't know a driver from a . . . from a nine iron.”

Paddy swallowed his boiling rage.

He went to the steam-powered golf cart, found the golf bag, rummaged through for a few seconds, found what he was looking for, and stalked back to the three laughing Black Handers.

“This,” Paddy said, “is a driver.”

He swung the driver so hard that Fatface wasn't fat anymore.

“No! No!” Six Toes cried.

Paddy tossed the driver aside.

“And this,” Paddy said, “is a nine iron.”

It's best not to dwell on what Paddy did with the nine iron. Suffice it to say that five minutes later there was a sudden opening in the leadership of the Black Hand.

It was such a bad afternoon for the Black Hand that—under new leadership—they reorganized and renamed their organization. Out of respect for Nafia assassin Paddy Trout, they called their new criminal gang the Mafia.

And Paddy had earned the nickname that would follow him for the rest of his long life: Nine Iron.

H
uang Long, the Dragon King, could move pretty fast for a creature the size of a subway train. With a whoosh he flew overhead. Mother dragon flew with him.

Xiao grabbed Mack's arm and pulled him along, even as she swiftly changed from human back to dragon. In seconds Mack was airborne on Xiao's scaly back, zooming crazily through the palace in the wake of the first family of Dragon Land.

They burst through the door and out into the open.

Instantly Mack spotted a small army of creatures—Tong Elves, Skirrit, and Lepercons—rushing down the long ramp. Smoke billowed behind them.

A dragon the color of ripe plums swirled before them, and even from this distance Mack could hear a stunningly loud dragon voice shouting, “Back! This is Dragon Home!”

Two of the Skirrit were hauling an odd, ornate tube, like a cannon lifted off its wheels, or like a really heavy bazooka.

They stopped, rested the barrel on the backs of two Tong Elves, and took aim at the purple dragon.

Mack saw the explosion before he heard the bang. A spray of tiny bright pellets—they sparkled like diamonds—hit the purple dragon.

“Sizzle cannon!” Xiao yelled.

Instantly the dragon fell to the ground.

Xiao cried out in terror and rage. Mack could feel her muscles tense beneath her scales.

Huang Long looked back at his daughter. “Go! I will take care of this!”

“Father, no!” Xiao cried. “I can fight!”

“It's not us they want,” Huang Long snapped. “It's the humans! Get them to safety. Take the barge! And remember: the key is the Vargran tongue. Each of the Twelve will have a different resonance of the
enlightened puissance
, a different special ability. But it will all rest on Vargran!”

“Go, little one!” her mother cried. “You must fulfill your destiny! But keep up with your algebra homework!”

Xiao started to argue; Mack could almost feel the defiance. But with a shudder Xiao said, “Yes, Father. Yes, Mother.”

She turned suddenly, practically leaving Mack's stomach behind. They sped back to where a very frustrated Stefan and Jarrah waited.

Xiao landed and changed to her human look. Which, by the way, had some creepy moments. Half dragon, half girl is not a good look for anyone. “We should run,” she panted. “I can't carry the three of you.”

Mack didn't need to be asked twice. The four of them ran. Across manicured lawns, across decorative arched bridges, shortcutting through a palace done up in pale pink and gold lace.

Overhead the dragons flew with a whoosh of wind to confront the menace.

“Can't your dad just hose them down with his fire breath?” Jarrah asked as they ran.

Mack could see her point. He'd spotted at least half a dozen dragons so far. It was hard to see how anything could stand up to them.

“Fire breath?” Xiao snorted. “What, like Eragon? Like in Tolkien? Does my father look like Smaug to you?” Then in a somewhat less offended tone, “The fire breathing? That's our western cousins, not us. We are not those dragons. We are not barbarians. First, my father will attempt to reason with the invaders.”

They were nearing one of the towering walls of the cave. Mack spotted an opening, like the mouth of a cave, bordered in carved wood. It was simple, nothing ornate.

They were racing alongside the gentle river that wandered through Dragon Home, and Mack realized that the river must flow out through that opening. He couldn't see it very clearly from this angle. He couldn't see much of anything because sweat was stinging his eyes.

But he did notice the four Skirrit bounding along the far side of the river, keeping pace on their crazy grasshopper legs, taking twenty-yard steps, racing to cut them off.

And he noticed that at least two of them had something that looked a little like guns—but could also have been bent soda cans.

Skreeet!

That made everyone miss a step. No one had ever heard that sound before. And the missed step saved them.

A spray of crystalline pellets went shooting by, just in front of them.

“Owww!” Jarrah cried.

She stared at the back of her hand (still running, of course; she was curious about the pain, but not curious enough to stand around examining herself).

“It's a . . . a thing!” Jarrah cried.

“Get it off you!” Xiao yelled.

Jarrah picked at it with her finger.

“No, no! Not with your finger! It'll sizzle your finger, too!”

As she ran, Jarrah dug out a coin from her pocket and used the edge of it to pry the tiny, painful bead from her hand.

“Are they shooting at us with cans of Mountain Dew?” Stefan asked.

“Sizzle guns,” Xiao said grimly. “The pellets are like tiny magnets. They try to come together, and they put out a bubbly acid to eat anything that gets in the way. Imagine a hundred of them hitting you!”

Imagining this helped Mack and the others run faster. But not as fast as the Skirrit, who were now ahead of them on the far bank and would easily cut them off where the river entered the wall.

“Can you all swim?” Xiao cried. Then added, “Underwater?”

No one answered.

The Skirrit were standing still now, blocking the way, aiming their sizzle guns.

Xiao leaped and broke the river surface with a perfect knifelike dive. Jarrah was right behind her, equally athletic.

Stefan and Mack hit the water together—more cannonball than Olympic racing dive.

Mack swallowed a little water, fought down the desperate urge to cough, opened his eyes, and saw three sets of shoes kicking away from him.

He leveled off, tried not to think about drowning, and swam hard after them through lovely aquamarine water.

Turning slightly, Mack saw refracted Skirrit faces peering down into the water.

He kept kicking.

Ahead was darkness like a wall. He saw Stefan's shoes kicking. He followed.

Through the water he heard churning and someone shouting and, from farther away now, the furious cries of the Skirrit.

He swam until his lungs burned and his muscles grew weak from lack of oxygen and his brain swirled. Then, when he had no other choice, he surfaced and sucked air like it was the last breath he would ever take.

Stefan's strong hands grabbed his wet shirt and his belt and hauled him onto a dry surface. He coughed up river water, exhausted. But at least there were no Skirrit.

What there was, was a very odd boat.

Xiao was speaking respectfully to the “boat.” And of course the boat was answering her with equally grave politeness.

Mack hung his head down between his knees.

“Just like, five minutes of normal. Just five minutes. That would be great.”

Stefan laughed happily. “Dude, we have moved out of normal. We live in cuh-razeee now!”

T
he boat—the barge, as Huang Long had called it; the royal barge, in fact—was not quite what Mack had expected. For one thing, it was alive.

Above the water it looked kind of like a boat. It had sides that might be wood or woodlike. It had a deck that was hard and firm underfoot. It had a tall mast, and that's where things began to look weird. The mast was very obviously not a tree trunk but a spur of white bone, slightly bowed and tapering.

Below the waterline Mack could glimpse the rest of the barge. It looked a bit like a whale, very large, tinged blue. Toward the stern was not one set of flukes but three vertical tails, like a shark's tail. Times three.

And at the front was a long, sinewy neck ending in a head and face like a very large pug dog.

“We'll need seats, Barge,” Xiao said to the pug face.

“Ah! Then we'll be moving at speed?”

“Yes. Full speed.”

The pug face grinned. “Ah, yes!”

The deck, which had seemed almost like wood, was revealed as living flesh as it rippled and formed rudimentary benches.

“Sit. Hold on tight,” Xiao commanded.

Mack took the seat beside Xiao.

“Ready,” Xiao said, and before the last syllable had stopped reverberating through the air, the barge launched. Like a roller coaster out of a power chute.

A huge bow wave went up, forming walls of spray to their right and left. The sail filled with wind, despite the fact that there was no wind, and the barge swooshed away like a rocket.

Mack was slammed against his seat. Xiao grinned at him. “The barge never gets to go full speed. He lives for this.”

They rocketed down the tunnel, water drenching the rock sides and roof. After a while an area opened up on the right, a sort of diorama. It blew by in a flash, and they were back in the gloomy tunnel.

“What was that?”

Xiao shrugged. “Like a museum: great moments in history. Normally we'd be going slower and we could enjoy the displays. They keep the trip from getting too boring.”

“Where are we going?” Jarrah asked. She looked as happy as the pug head, whose tongue was hanging out about three feet, like a dog on a car ride.

“To the wall,” Xiao said. “There we can get a flight to our next stop.”

“What's our next stop?” Jarrah asked.

Xiao looked puzzled. “Don't you know?”

“We don't exactly have a map,” Mack said.

“What do you have?”

“Some old dude who talks to us from bathroom fixtures,” Mack said.

Xiao stared at him. Blinked. Blinked again.

“Yeah,” Mack said, “that's what we think of it, too.” He shrugged. “Look, I'm sure Grimluk would lay it all out for us if he could. But the dude's three thousand years old, and I think he's doing the best he can. And the bad guys kind of keep the pressure on us, you know? When we were back at school just finding out about this, or at Uluru, or when we were talking to your dad . . . I mean, it's not like we ever get a lot of downtime to sit around and plan things out. We have thirty-four days, and the Pale Queen is trying hard to make sure we don't even have one day.”

“I didn't intend any criticism,” Xiao said mildly.

Mack sighed. He felt discouraged. This whole thing had been impossible from the start. It was getting more impossible with each passing day. With each hour.

“Anyway,” Mack said, “all I know right now is ‘egg rocks.' And hopefully that leads us to number four. And we kind of have to figure they'll come after us there, too.”

“Hey,” Jarrah said. “No worries: we're not dead yet.”

“And we're having fun!” Stefan said. Then, when he saw the extremely dubious faces turned toward him, he added in a less enthusiastic voice, “Well, I am.”

“Have you Googled the ‘egg rocks' thing?” Xiao asked.

“We think it's in Germany. A place called Externsteine.”

They blew along at what had to be ever-increasing speed, because now the water flying from the bow had been turned to steam. Friction heat.

“This is excellent,” Stefan said. “You guys ever water-ski off this thing?”

Xiao did not seem amused. “Is he one of us?” she asked Mack.

“Not exactly,” Mack said. The question made him uncomfortable. “He's . . . Well, he used to be my bully.”

“Your bully?”

“Yeah, he was the toughest kid in the school. We got to know each other because he was always beating me up.”

“Is that how American kids get to know each other?”

“I wouldn't say it's the most common way. Sometimes we just walk up to someone and, you know, say hi or whatever.”

“I see,” Xiao said, although Mack doubted she did.

“So. You're a dragon.”

“Yes.”

“But you're also a girl.”

“No, I'm a dragon. But I can make myself into a girl. It's how I go to school.”

“You go to school? Dragon school?”

“No. Human school. In the outside world.” She pointed upward. “Up there. Although not directly up there, because we are far beyond the city now.”

“Why do you go to human school? To learn human stuff?”

“Not really,” Xiao said. “It's to learn basic things. And wrong things.”

“That's why I go to school, too: to learn wrong things,” Mack said. Xiao didn't seem to get that he was joking. He was beginning to fear that she had no sense of humor. Normally Mack would find this very off-putting. It made it almost hard for him to relate, to talk to a person. But he didn't feel that way about Xiao, possibly because she was a dragon.

“So you're one of us,” he said. “I mean, one of the Magnificent Twelve.”

“Yes. I've known it for some time now. We dragons may know some things you humans don't. Like, well, like just about everything except technology.”

“We know other stuff, too,” Mack said.

Xiao looked skeptically at him. “Tell me the truth: before all this started, you only believed in the things you could see and touch and feel. Right? You knew nothing about the wonders and the terrors that lie hidden in the unseen places of the Earth.”

“Well, I didn't know there were dragons living under the Forbidden City, that's true. Or dragons anywhere. Or Lepercons. Or Tong Elves. Or Skirrit. Or some princess named Risky.”

“A princess named Risky?” Xiao said, puzzled.

Mack was pleased to discover something he knew that Xiao did not. “I think her full name is Ereskigal.”

Xiao's eyes froze into a stare. She didn't move, except for a cheek muscle. It twitched.

“Ereskigal?” She held her breath, then let it out in a gasp. “You encountered Ereskigal?”

“Yeah. We weren't exactly friends. And I kind of had to destroy her.” He had conflicted feelings about that. On the one hand, it seemed kind of creepy to brag about killing anyone or anything. On the other hand, he'd managed to take down a very, very scary person.

Xiao laughed. “You did not kill her. At least not the way you think.”

“Hey,” Stefan interjected from the seat in front of them. “Mack fried her butt. Zap! Shock and awe! Smoke and ash! Pow! So awesome.”

“You don't know much, do you?” Xiao said.

To Mack's amazement, Stefan's face sort of crumpled. If Mack hadn't known better, he'd have thought Stefan was a little intimidated by Xiao. “No,” he mumbled. “I don't.”

“Ereskigal, or as some say it, Ereshkigal, is Morgan le Fay, Kali, Persephone, and Hel.”

“She's Hel all right,” Jarrah muttered.

“She is not dead. Ereskigal must be killed twelve times, each time in a different way. Unless you killed her twelve times, she is not gone.”

Mack glanced nervously over his shoulder. Even Risky couldn't possibly keep up with the barge.

Although now that he noticed it, the barge was starting to slow down.

“We're almost there,” Xiao said. “We'll pass as tourists at the wall. It's morning now. We have to walk for a way along the wall; the dragon we're to meet doesn't like the river, so he lives a short distance away.”

The barge was definitely going slower.

Then it stopped beside a dock. Xiao led the way off the barge. She paused to thank the creature. Then began a long climb up a spiral staircase. At the top of about a thousand steps (actual number 812), a tube hung from the arched stone ceiling. It was brass and green and ended in eyepieces. Xiao took a look through the eyepieces.

“It's clear,” she said.

Now they climbed a bronze ladder. Xiao pushed up against what looked like a blank stone ceiling. It lifted with surprising ease.

They climbed out onto a wall. But not just any wall. The Great Wall of China.

This was a wall that, back in the days when it was all still standing, ran more than five thousand miles. About ten feet thick, maybe thirty feet tall except for the frequent towers.

Steep, green, triangular mountains tumbled together. They weren't that tall, but there were a lot of them. Like a bunch of fuzzy green blocks all jumbled together.

The wall snaked right across these mountains, up one side, down the next, up again, down again, and whee, around to catch the next mountain.

It reminded Mack a little of the dragons. Sinewy and snakelike and strong, with stones and cobbles making the scales.

“Big wall,” Stefan commented.

“Yes,” Xiao agreed. “An enormous structure built by humans. A sacred place of great power. Millions labored for many years to build it. And many of those who built it died in the process. Their bones are now beneath our feet.”

Stefan carefully stepped aside.

“I meant all through the wall, not just right here beneath your feet,” Xiao explained. “When workers died, they were added to the wall.”

She looked at Stefan as if expecting a response, but he had turned away and was no longer listening.

“This way,” Xiao said, and pointed downhill.

“Yeah, let's go that way,” Stefan said. “Because you know what? I think dragon girl is right. Risky? She's not all that dead.”

Slowly Mack turned. The hair on the back of his head was standing up.

There, at the top of the closest mountain behind them, stood Princess Ereskigal.

She waved.

Waved like she and Mack were old friends.

“Hi, Mack!” she cried cheerfully. “Stay right there. I'm coming to kill you!”