Underworlds #3: Revenge of the Scorpion King (5 page)

K
INGU’S TAIL HARDLY MOVED.

I didn’t take my eyes off of it, but all I saw was a blur.

“Ahh!” Loki shrieked as Kingu’s stinger made contact. The armor at his shoulder burst open, and we saw white bone. Loki collapsed to his knees, clutching his shoulder, and Dana stumbled away from him. I pulled her behind us.

“Kingu, you fiend —” Loki shouted, then gasped for air.

“You
dare
speak to me!” Kingu boomed, his tail arching high over his head. “You dare cast darkness upon me? I
invented
darkness, Pale Master!” He spat out those last two words as if they were a curse. Then he swung his head around to the giant.

“Ullikummi!” he said.

“By the Sun and Moon of Babylon, I obey you, Father!” the giant thundered. “What would you have me do?”

Kingu glared at Loki then, and with the slightest movement of his pincer, he indicated the ground below us, where Fenrir and the six monsters awaited. “Send the Tablets below!”

Without a pause, the stone giant threw the Tablets of Destiny from the top of the tower. They exploded like a bomb, shattering into dust at the feet of the beasts.

“NO!” Loki cried, peering over the edge of the tower in disbelief.

I suddenly understood what had just happened. The lost chord was the only thing that released the seventh monster and the Tablets of Destiny, which would free Kingu from his curse. But Kingu could never tell Loki that. So instead, he tricked him. Kingu tricked the trickster.

“My curse is ended! My son lives!” Kingu bellowed. “Loki, your childish runes cannot control me. I have tricked you. These
children
have tricked you! God for god, you do not want to fight me.”

Loki staggered backward, his expression a mask of rage. Holding one silver hand over his wounded shoulder, he snarled, “You children will feel my wrath as never before. Midgard will burn to ashes!”

In a fury, he shot a bolt of silver light at us, but Kingu stepped in the way. The bolt exploded on his chest.

“You will not harm them here!” Kingu shouted. “Remember where you are, ice god. This is
my
Underworld. A world of heat!”

As he spoke, the moon fell away and the long-hidden sun edged over the horizon, a white disc of light. At the same time, Kingu’s twin stingers flashed out at Loki, throwing him unceremoniously off the side of the tower.

“Ahhhh!” Loki screamed.

We ran to the edge in time to see Birdman fly up, catch Loki in midair, and carry him safely to the ground below.

Dark light shone from the rune in Loki’s breastplate, and the six monsters crowded around him.

“Monsters — to Midgard!” he yelled. Within moments, Loki had climbed in his sledge and led his snarling troop of fire monsters to the river and beyond.

We were silent at the top of the tower for a long minute.

“He got what he wanted,” said Jon quietly. “He’s stronger now.”

“Not all of what he wanted,” Kingu said. “Loki believes he has won here today. He has a few more beasts, that is all. But runes or no runes, without the Tablets, the fire beasts will not be easy to control.”

The scorpion shell covering Kingu’s face rippled from top to bottom, and the ridges and knobs of his forehead became less prominent.

“It begins. I become myself once more. Ullikummi, come. Children, follow!”

Stones shifted together across the summit, forming stairs that coiled down the side of the tower to the ground.

Astonished by the transformations taking place every moment to the Scorpion King, we walked behind him down the outside of the tower. Ullikummi followed, twenty steps at once.

By the time we arrived on the ground, the black dunes of night were turning pink with the coming of day.

“My curse is ended,” said Kingu, one of his arms becoming a large and muscular human arm. “Soon, I shall have my revenge on the great god who condemned me. But there are more pressing matters to attend to. Loki plans to topple Asgard? Odin is a just and honorable god, well-known in the Underworlds. His overthrow will not happen on my watch.” He looked at us fiercely. “This war is now my war.”

“What will you do?” Sydney asked.

Kingu pointed to the west, beyond the river and the brightening dunes. “In Egypt, we will find the allies we need. Loki’s journey to the northern heights shall be stopped.”

“The northern heights!” Dana gasped, grabbing my arm. “I remember now! Before my parents burned the book, they locked its secret in my mind by reading me the book over and over. The legend says the rune lies in a tiny village in the far north of Iceland. I know where the Crystal Rune is!”

“Then as I go to the Egyptian Underworld, you must go north,” Kingu said. “Panu, fetch the Chariot of the Whirlwind.”

“Yes, sir!” said Panu, bounding away.

By the time we heard the sound of hooves thundering beneath our feet, Kingu was completely human again, his scorpion shell no more than armor. But the hooves we heard weren’t horse hooves. Beasts made of rain and wind and storm approached us from the distance, their limbs whirling and howling. We stared in shock.

Panu snapped and slapped the reins wildly, then the chariot screeched to a halt. “The great chariot awaits, my friends!”

“Children,” Kingu said, “in return for what you did today, the gates of the Underworld are open to you. Panu, bring our young friends to the border of the Greek Underworld. Loki will begin his attack on Midgard while his runes still control the monsters. Go in strength, children. And hurry!”

Kingu took his place at the front of his vast army of lion-headed warriors. With his giant son at his right side, they began their long march to the Egyptian Underworld.

We clambered into the Chariot of the Whirlwind, and Panu drove it like a race car driver. The chariot was as good as its name. Within minutes, we had left the vast desert behind and were standing at the banks of the River Styx.

We thanked Panu for helping us, for saving our lives, for everything.

“You’re amazing,” I said. “We wouldn’t have gotten anywhere if it wasn’t for you.”

Panu grinned. “We won today, a little,” he said. “Good luck, friends. I hope we meet again in different times.”

I wondered about that. Different times could be either better or worse.

As Panu and the chariot vanished into the darkness, we hurried down the riverbank to search for the raft of the ancient Greek ferryman, Charon. Instead, we found the old man crawling on his hands and knees, barely breathing.

“Loki!” Charon cried as we helped him to his feet. “The silver brute! He’s been here! Horrible monsters! A huge dog and a very ugly man with fire in his head. Loki led them up and out there. To your town!”

The old man pointed across the river, his finger wiggling at the murky darkness.

“You must go!” he cried. “Quickly!”

W
E WERE BREATHLESS AS
C
HARON PILOTED THE RAFT
silently across the river. I tipped him with one of my sister Mags’s blue-haired pennies, and we rushed away through the reeds.

We were quiet as we entered the boiler room at school, quiet as we wove through the dark halls, quiet as we exited the main doors of the school.

Then we saw the fires.

“Oh, my gosh,” said Sydney. “Oh, no.”

Loki hadn’t wasted any time.

Sirens shrieked from every direction. The horrifying winged shape of Birdman dived across the red sky, blasting flame from his cracked beak. Mammoth roared and thundered through the town, upending cars and goring them with his flaming tusks. Plumes of smoke rose from neighborhoods all around us. There were frightened shouts and screaming, car horns, house alarms, the crazed barking of dogs.

“The Fires of Midgard,” I said.

Pinewood Bluffs was burning.

Past the high school we saw Furnace, howling at the top of his lungs and belching fire at the nearby movie theater. Fire Serpent stomped up behind him, his webbed feet gouging prints into the pavement. Together, the two monsters blew out red and green flames like twin flamethrowers.

We staggered back from the heat, not knowing what to do. Anger rose in my throat. I wanted to rush at the monsters and pound them with my fists, but I knew I’d be incinerated just like the movie theater. And the pizza place. And the homes across the street. Mad Dog was at the shopping center, battering the cars one by one across the parking lot and setting them ablaze.

“Owen, is there any life left in that thing?” asked Dana, nodding at the lyre.

We no longer had Loki’s lost glove. It was all up to me now.

“I have to retune the strings for our world,” I said. “I need some quiet —”

“I smell Fenrir,” said Sydney, waving away the ashes falling through the night air. “This way. Past the nail salon.”

We ran as quickly as we could. The craft store had already gone up like a pile of twigs.

Before we got to the corner, police cars and ambulances barreled down the street toward us. It was too late to hide. The front car slowed and the window rolled down. “Kids, get out of here,” the officer yelled as the car picked up speed again. “Go to your homes. Now!”

“Homes!” said Jon, his eyes wide. “Our parents. We need to find them and make sure they’re safe —”

We heard the popping of gunshots and knew the police were firing at the monsters. The noise was tremendous, a roar of chaos. We had to get away from the center of town.

“I see flames in our neighborhood,” said Sydney. “Where’s Loki in all of this?”

Dana rubbed her wrist. “Now I wish I could sense him. Come on!”

We ran along the quieter alleys behind Main Avenue. Thick smoke rose into the black sky above us. I was so tired. We all were. I tried to return the lyre’s tuning to what it was before, since we didn’t need the lost chord anymore. We needed the lyre to work here. I restrung the broken string. It was loose, dull, and twangy, but at least it made a noise.

When I plucked the strings one by one, a cool breeze wafted over us. Good. It was working.

We approached the streets near Jon’s and Sydney’s homes. They looked deserted.

“Have they started to evacuate already?” Sydney said. “Our parents will be crazy with worry.”

To see my friends stone-cold terrified struck me. Our wild adventure in the Underworlds had seemed pretty unreal. But now it seemed too real, too true. These were our homes. Our people! Pinewood Bluffs was going to be a mountain of ash by morning.

Just as Loki had predicted.

As if she had read my thoughts, Dana touched my shoulder. “Owen, we need to find him … Loki … to …”

“To stop him?” I said.

And then we heard the words that no one in Pinewood Bluffs would ever say.

“Burn, Midgard! Burn!”

“There!” said Jon. He grabbed my arm and turned me toward the center of town. “He’s there. On the steps of the museum.”

And we saw him.

Loki stood on the top step of the museum, howling like a crazed basketball coach watching his team score.

Behind him were the double red doors that had led us to finding the lyre of Orpheus in the first place.

I didn’t know what I wanted to do to Loki, but I found myself creeping along the fronts of smoldering buildings, edging closer to him.

Jon, Sydney, and Dana were right behind me. We all wanted the same thing. To stop him.

“We can get closer by going up the side,” Dana whispered, nodding her head to the alley on the east side of the museum.

I smiled. “Yes.”

We ducked down the alley and worked our way to the corner nearest the stairs.

I suddenly remembered the person we’d seen lurking in the museum. It seemed so long ago, but the dark figure we saw in the museum halls seemed to want Orpheus’s lyre as much as we did. Who was it? It wasn’t Loki. But then who?

Whoom!
The night lit up with a blast of red flame, and Fenrir leaped from the shadows in front of us. The force of the blast threw Sydney back into Jon, while Dana and I ducked close to the wall.

Fenrir paced in front of us, growling loudly.

Then Loki was there, peering down from the museum stairs and grinning wickedly. “Do you like it?” he said, waving a hand at the street. “Now that Midgard burns, the war enters its final phase. Say good-bye to your homes. Your families. Your world.”

He laughed a crazy laugh, like a madman. Except that he wasn’t a man. He was the worst kind of god.

Evil. Ruthless. Cruel.

“You —” I said, but I didn’t finish.

Suddenly, I was wrenching my arms from Sydney and Jon, pushing Dana aside, and jumping up the steps, swinging the lyre over my head like a weapon.