Seven Wonders 3-Book Collection by Peter Lerangis

  She held out her free hand, palm up.

  The beeping of Dad’s phone made me jump. Cass and Aly.

  “Don’t even think of answering that,” the woman said. “And don’t even think of not handing the Loculus over.”

  “Give it to her,” Dad said.

  My brain shouted at me with shouldn’ts. I shouldn’t have let down my guard. Shouldn’t have left without Cass and Aly. Shouldn’t have assumed that we would beat the Massa here.

  Shouldn’t have allowed myself to hope.

  The phone stopped ringing. I had no choice now.

  My body was strengthening by the second, but it didn’t matter anymore. I moved my arms toward Maria, holding out the golden orb. “Give my regards to Brother Dimitrios,” I said. “And tell him we won’t give up.”

  “Oh, I’m not through with you, Josh-or-maybe-James.” With a mocking laugh she stepped forward, taking the Loculus from my hand. “Brother Dimitrios is expecting three of these, and so now you can just lead me to the others.”

  “They’re right here,” Dad piped up. “I have them!”

  I spun around. Out of the shadow came a jagged black fossil, hurtling straight for the woman’s face.

  She flinched, turning away. The stone caught her on the side of the head with a thud both solid and sickening.

  With a tiny, involuntary scream, she fell to her knees. I lunged forward, grabbing the Loculus from her hand.

  Dad was scrambling across the room. His own head was bloody. He yanked away the gun with one hand, shoving her down to the floor with the other.

  The rope.

  I grabbed it off the center table and tossed it to Dad. Dropping the gun, he took the woman’s arms and held them behind her back. She thrashed and cursed, but he managed to tie her wrists tight.

  “That was a petrified dinosaur jaw I conked her with,” he said, catching his breath. “Guess it qualifies as a blast from the past.”

  The woman kicked with her legs but only succeeding in turning herself faceup. “You won’t succeed,” she said. “You know this.”

  “That’s what my high school wrestling coach said to me thirty-two years ago,” Dad said. “But look—he was wrong!”

  “Are you okay?” I asked him. “Your head . . .”

  “To quote my favorite son,” Dad replied with a wry smile, “‘it’s only a flesh wound.’ Now let’s find your friends. And be very careful. There are probably more Massa where this charming lady came from.”

  We ran out of the room to the sound of the woman’s threats. I held tight to the Loculus of Healing. “On the way down,” I said, “grab my arm. You’ll feel a lot better.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  ANOTHER EXIT

  “WHERE THE HECK are you?” was Aly’s greeting to me over the phone.

  “Heading to the front entrance, near the Roosevelt statue, with Dad.” I held Dad’s phone tight to my ear as he and I charged down the stairs. “I have the Loculus in my backpack.”

  “You found the Loculus?” she shrieked.

  “Aly, listen,” I said. “The Massa are here. We ran into one of them. She’s upstairs, third floor, all tied up. But there are bound to be others, so be careful. And hurry!”

  “On our way,” Aly replied. “Cass says emosewa. So do I!”

  Shutting the phone, I gave it back to Dad. He led the way, racing past the elephant exhibit, but he stopped short of the museum’s huge entrance hall. Ducking behind the archway, he whirled around, mouthing “Police.”

  I ran up next to him and carefully glanced into the hall. Near the giant skeleton, two policemen were peppering a night custodian with questions. Beyond them, outside the main glass doors, I could see the flashing red-and-blue lights of their car at the bottom of the outer stairs.

  “What are they doing here?” I whispered.

  “We took uniforms, so did the Massa,” Dad said. “The real Maria was assaulted. Anybody could have called in a report. Let’s use another exit. I’ll call Cass and Aly.”

  As he pulled out the phone, Cass’s voice boomed out loudly: “Woo-hoo, we’re back in ssenisub!”

  I spun around, wincing. Cass and Aly were hurrying toward us. Dad waved frantically, and I put my finger to my mouth to shush them. The conversation out in the exhibit hall stopped. “Hello?” a deep voice called out.

  “Go back!” Dad whispered to Aly, Cass, and me.

  “We can go invisible!” I whispered. Cass started to shrug off his pack, where the Loculus of Invisibility was stashed.

  “No time!” Dad whisper-shouted. “Get to the other exit—Seventy-Seventh Street, where the restrooms are. I’ll stall these guys.”

  “But—” I protested.

  “Go! I will meet you!” Dad said. “Protect the Loculi!”

  I could hear footsteps approaching. Dad gave me a shove and Aly took my arm. She quickly gave me back my phone and I shoved it in my pocket, stumbling back across the elephant exhibit hall with her and Cass. He led us through the museum, past the watchful eyes of thousands of dead animals.

  We burst into the exhibit hall with the longboat. Standing in our path, his back to us, was a museum guard. As we stopped short, he turned around, startled.

  His eyes went wide and he whipped his radio out.

  “Run!” I shouted.

  We made a break for the exit, going the long way around the boat. The guard was shouting into the radio now, reporting on us. The police would be here any second.

  I raced to the exit. Someone in a black leather jacket and a watch cap was standing outside in the driveway. His back was to us and he was staring across the street. A guard? A cop?

  We had room behind him. We could make it.

  I slipped through the door with Cass and Aly right behind. The guy turned around, and the light caught his face.

  He smiled, and we stopped in our tracks.

  “Dudes!”

  My legs locked. I blinked my eyes once, twice.

  Only one response was possible.

  “Marco?”

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  THE PRODIGAL SUNSHINE

  HE LOOKED OLDER. Bigger. But that was impossible.

  Everything about this moment was impossible. He wasn’t supposed to be here. He wasn’t supposed to be smiling at us, like nothing in the world was wrong.

  “’Sup, Brother Jack!” Marco bounded toward us, right hand held high. “Aly, my pal-y! Cass but not least! Fives!”

  All three of us backed away. Cass looked afraid. Aly could barely contain the disgust on her face. “How—how did you get here, Marco?” I said.

  “Clicked my heels three times and said ‘There’s no place like the Big Apple’! Plus Brother D has private wings.” Marco slowly lowered his hand. “What, no high fives for your Prodigal Sunshine?”

  “A joke . . .” Aly said, her voice simmering. “It’s all a big joke to you. Well, you just laugh your head off about this news, Marco—Professor Bhegad is dead.”

  Marco glanced at Aly warily. “Wait. For reals?”

  “Your people did it,” Cass said. “They injured him at the island. We rescued him, and then he sacrificed himself so we could get a Loculus.” He was looking at Marco with crazy intensity, as if he stared hard enough he might flip a sanity switch. “We almost died, Marco. Jack just had a treatment. So did Aly, and me. The episodes are coming quicker. Time’s running out.”

  Marco looked out onto the street. Three figures were running toward us. I wanted to run, but he gripped my arm. “Dudes, listen. A couple of weeks, a month tops, you won’t recognize the island. The Massa plans are insane. We throw those Locues on the Hepto? Bam, we live forever and the place is jamming . . .”

  “And you will be King Marco and the sky will rain fairy dust,” Aly said, nearly spitting her words out. “We’ve heard it already. Marco Ramsay, you are an idiot. And a monster.”

  “But . . . whoa . . .” Marco looked hurt and a little bewildered. “I figured by now you guys would have changed your minds . . .
”

  Enough.

  I ripped my arm out of Marco’s grip and pulled Aly up the driveway. Cass stumbled behind us. As we bolted out toward the street Marco called out once. But he didn’t pursue us.

  The two other figures, however, veered in our direction. I saw a taxi speeding across Seventy-Seventh Street toward the park and I waved my arms crazily to hail it. One of the figures left his feet and dived into me, smashing me against a black iron gate. The other pointed a small gun toward Cass and Aly.

  As I scrambled to my feet I caught a whiff of cigar and stale cologne. A fist grabbed my collar and yanked me to my feet.

  “Nice work, Brother Yiorgos,” said the man with Aly and Cass.

  “Thank you, Brother Stavros,” said my attacker.

  Marco was running up the driveway now. “Yo, Bluto, why’d you have to go and do that to my peeps?”

  “Peeps?” Yiorgos said. “What is peeps?”

  My chest was heaving. Brother Yiorgos seemed to have lost a tooth since we last saw him. The thatch of his meager salt-and-pepper hair waved in the night air like a clump of dying crabgrass, and his grin looked like piano keys. “We go, Stavros,” he said. “Police out front.”

  Police.

  I looked back. Where was Dad? No sign of him at the Seventy-Seventh Street entrance.

  Brother Yiorgos’s eyes were darting toward Stavros, his younger, slightly smarter and thinner clone, and then back toward the park. There, another black-clad figure was waving his arms crazily as if swatting flies.

  “Whoa, what’s wrong with Niko?” Marco asked.

  Stavros shrugged. But his eyes were cautious and intent. At the moment, none of the Massa was paying much attention to me.

  I slipped my fingers into my pocket and pulled out my phone. As quick as I could, I sent Dad a text: WHERE R U?

  I looked up. Marco had seen me, but he quickly looked away. The two Massa goons hadn’t noticed a thing.

  “Hrrrmph!” That was Aly. She stared at me, eyes bugged out, exaggeratedly looking toward Columbus Avenue. As if sending me a mental message: Let’s make a run for it!

  I glanced in that direction and spotted two hooded, black-garbed figures a few feet up the block. I sent her a message back as best I could: We are surrounded.

  Just beyond Aly, Cass was frozen. Like Yiorgos and Stavros, his glance was slowly sweeping the section of the block between here and the park.

  The door in the building across the street seemed to be moving.

  And the windows around them.

  I blinked. On second glance I realized it wasn’t the buildings themselves. It was a weird trick of light. Something barely noticeable was moving across them, something in the air. Like a giant, sheer black curtain or a cloud of smoke.

  Brother Niko was running toward us now, babbling in Greek. His eyes were as bright as streetlamps. “Skia! Skia!”

  Stavros ignored him, turning to Yiorgos with an impatient shrug. “Now. Fast. Go.”

  “Go where?” I demanded.

  The answer I got was a sharp shove. The two men pushed Cass, Aly, and me toward Central Park, against the protests of Niko. “Meet someone,” Yiorgos said.

  But the strange smoke cloud was thickening. It seemed to billow toward us from across the street. “Dudopoulos,” Marco called out. “It’s looking like a mad crazy weather front. Or some cockroaches playing Quidditch.”

  I could hear a pounding, like a distant herd of cattle. The ground shook slightly under my feet. “What’s that sound?” I asked.

  “The subway?” Aly guessed.

  “The subway doesn’t run under Seventy-Seventh Street,” Cass said.

  Stavros lurched backward, as if something had caught him on the chin. Yiorgos suddenly screamed, falling away.

  I saw the flash of two bloodshot eyes in the dark, appearing and disappearing like a phantom. “Run!” I shouted.

  Cass, Aly, and I bolted in the opposite direction, past the circular driveway. Behind us I could hear the squealing of a car’s brakes, a bone-jarring crash.

  Ahead of us, the two hooded figures had turned. They were staring at the commotion, too. We stepped off the curb to avoid them, to circle around them, but my ankle caught on the curb and I stumbled.

  My phone spilled out onto the street. Its screen was lit up. A reply from Dad. ARRESTED. ON WAY TO PRECINCT 20.

  I fought back panic, shoving the phone into my pocket as I scrabbled to my feet. I felt a hand closing on my arm. With a grunt I pulled it back, trying to shake loose.

  The hood fell off the Massa’s head. A cascade of light-brown hair fell out.

  My legs locked in place. For a moment I couldn’t breathe. The woman’s features were lean and sharp, the face of an athlete, a person who was prepared for anything and never took no for an answer. Her eyes, a deep blue-green that pierced through the darkness, seemed to dance in her head, and as she smiled tiny wrinkles spread on either side of her face.

  “Hello, Jack,” said my mom.

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  MOM

  “M—!” I BLURTED out, but her hand was over my mouth before I could finish the word.

  Mom.

  In that fraction of a second, I wished that Nostalgikos had stolen away my memory. Because if it had, I could have faced her like this and not cared that she was alive and warm and beautiful. I wouldn’t have wanted to wrap my arms around her and breathe the scent of her neck. It wouldn’t have occurred to me that this closeness, in this moment, could bring back six whole lost years.

  All I would have known was that I was looking into the face of a killer.

  And that would have been so much easier.

  I was trembling as she carefully put her finger to her mouth.

  I shook my head, not to disagree but because I didn’t know what else to do.

  Her eyes were darting over my shoulder, to the noise down the street. “I am Sister Nancy,” she said.

  “No!” I said. “You’re not! You’re—”

  “Come!” She pulled my hand and began running away from the sound, toward Columbus Avenue. Cass and Aly were already ahead of us.

  “Hurry!” Cass shouted.

  I looked over my shoulder. Niko, Yiorgos, and Stavros were stumbling toward us, their limbs flailing. Marco was spin-kicking and punching into the thin air. It looked like some strange ritual martial arts dance.

  Before I could react, I felt a bony hand around my neck. And another. I grabbed onto them and tried to pull them off. The dense blackness shifted and thickened before me. Eyes materialized out of the air, a jaw, teeth, cheekbones. Now I saw a ragged, grinning face of ripped flesh and empty eyes.

  Shadows.

  They take on a more diaphanous appearance when they wander the upper realms . . .

  Queen Artemisia’s army was here, in the living world. Howling, grunting, spitting, materializing, and vanishing like the flicker of a black mist. Sucking the darkness as they floated in a current of nonlight, both solid and smoke.

  How did they get here?

  “Let . . . me . . . gggghhhh . . .” I rasped. The zombie’s grip was tight.

  A foot lashed out of the darkness, landing a sharp kick on the Shadow’s jaw. With a muffled, gurgling squeak, the zombie fell away.

  “Are you all right?” Mom said, pulling me down the street at a run, her arm around my waist. “I—I don’t know what’s happening.”

  We were running across Columbus Avenue now. On the opposite side was a busy restaurant, but no one seemed to notice us.

  As we pounded down the next block, I saw Aly’s feet leave the ground. Then Cass’s. I heard them scream with surprise. Mom, too. We were caught up in the flow of Shadows now, surging under and around us, lifting us upward. I saw a grimace here, a skin-shredded skull there, and I prepared for another battle.

  But their eyes, at least the ones I saw, were looking upward. Over the roof of a nearby brownstone apartment building. I followed their glances, but I saw nothing.

  Until the sky
shimmered.

  I almost missed it. But the atmosphere was gathering up there, too, this time not into black clouds but an oval of dim blue light. It came toward us like a comet in slo-mo, growing larger, rustling the leaves of a scrawny street tree. It was expanding and contracting, forming arms, legs, a head. As it leveled out above the car roofs, it was the shape of a barefoot woman in a torn dress.

  “Skilaki . . .” I said.

  She scanned the street, scowling at the unseeable undead. Her face seemed to have lost some of its skin, and in her mouth were only two teeth. When she spoke, her voice seemed to enter my brain directly, bypassing my ears. “Whoever harms the Select,” she announced, “shall receive Artemisia’s wrath!”

  Below us came an excited flurry of grunts and snorts.

  “Bring them quickly,” she continued, her bony finger pointing farther up the street, “and bring them alive, if you will please the queen.”

  We were borne higher and higher, flowing down the street on a river of invisible hands. The amber windows around us, the homes of brick and stone, jittered in and out of sight in the shifting blackness. I glanced around for Cass and Aly and saw them floating far ahead, almost to the next avenue. “Do you know who this creature is?” my mother asked, her voice more awed than scared.

  Her calmness surprised me. My entire body was shaking. “An ex-sibyl,” I said. “She works for . . .”

  No. Keep it tight. Keep it a secret.

  “Works for who?” Mom asked.

  Could I tell her the truth? Could I ever trust her with anything again?

  We were moving faster now, across one brightly lit avenue and then another. Churches, shops, castlelike apartment houses sped by like phantoms, until the light dimmed and the smell of exhaust gave way to grass and soil. We veered right, following the wide band of a moonlit river.

  Riverside Park.

  Now we were catching up to Cass and Aly. They looked as petrified as I felt. Aly glanced at my mom and did a double take. “Mom?” she mouthed.