Island of Graves (12 page)

Once inside Haluki's house, Alex ran straight to the office. Holding Charlie to his chest, he entered the tube in the closet and slammed his hand down on the button. Instantly he was transported to the mansion. Wasting no time, Alex sprinted out of the kitchenette, past his office and private quarters, past
the Museum of Large and the two mysterious doors, and out onto the balcony. He raced down the stairs, crying, “Open the door, Sim!”

Simber obliged. “Need help?” he growled.

“No thanks!” Alex yelled, running through the open door. “She'd know something was up if she caught sight of you.”

Simber shook his head, eyes worried, but Alex was long gone and didn't see it.

Once outside Artimé, Alex turned a sharp left on the road that led to the palace. It wasn't far to the desolate area.

From under Alex's arm, Charlie frantically began signing.

“She's almost there?” Alex guessed. He pushed his body even harder, his lungs and thighs burning, and his arms aching from carrying the heavy statue.

Charlie nodded.

“Buckets of crud,” Alex muttered. “She's driving way too fast!” Still running, he adjusted Charlie and reached into the pocket where he kept the special dangerous component. He pinched it between his fingers and carefully extracted it.

In the distance Alex could see Sky, Carina, and Samheed standing by the road facing away from him, watching a dust
cloud that rose up, growing steadily closer. They appeared ready to fake an emergency and flag the vehicle down. Thankfully, without any help from Alex, they'd seen the dust and figured out Lani was coming. Alex felt a moment of relief. But soon the outline of a vehicle pushed out in front of the dust and an occasional glint of the morning sun bounced off the rusting chrome.

Charlie signed frantically with his two-thumbed hand in front of Alex's face, but Alex only picked up on a few words like “fast” and “soon.” “Got it,” he panted, even though he hadn't. He hoped Gondoleery wouldn't look past Lani's head to see him running toward the vehicle, but it couldn't be helped. He had to get there!

The young mage pressed on as the vehicle grew alarmingly closer, but he was having trouble getting enough breath to propel him any faster, and his body threatened to collapse. He pushed himself to his limit, but it wasn't enough. The vehicle's arrival was imminent.

With Alex too far away to do anything, Samheed, Carina, and Sky jumped out into the road. The vehicle swerved and slowed. Alex stumbled, overcorrected, slipped on loose gravel, and fell to the road. Charlie jumped from his arms just in time
as the spell component flew from Alex's grasp. The gargoyle reached out and nimbly caught the component between two thumbs as Alex skidded to a stop on the ground behind him.

Stunned and in pain, Alex lay still for a second, then came to his senses and scrambled to his feet, his breath too ragged to even allow him to say thanks to Charlie. He took the component, staggered forward, and left Charlie behind.

“Hide,” Alex warned Charlie in a ragged voice. It was all he could manage.

Charlie hopped to the side of the road and lay down in the ditch, then crawled up to the edge of it to watch.

Alex focused on the scene before him and picked up his speed once more. The vehicle had stopped. The driver's window was down. Sky, Carina, and Samheed were gesturing and playing their parts perfectly. As Samheed took the lead role in acting out their predicament, Sky glanced over her shoulder anxiously, and saw Alex. Immediately she turned back toward the car and shifted her position to block Gondoleery from being able to see him approach.

Come on, Stowe!
Alex urged himself. He was nearly within range now. With Sky blocking his view, he didn't see
Gondoleery open her door. He barely saw Lani leap out of the car. He could tell that
something
was happening, but he couldn't hear what anybody was saying.

Yet everything became instantly clear when Carina flew backward, a dagger of ice sticking through her shoulder. Samheed, blasted off his feet in a fiery burst, landed on the ground with flames taking hold of his clothing.

Alex's heart stopped. He saw Lani desperately searching Sully's pockets, but he realized at the same time she did that in this disguise, and in character, her component vest wasn't accessible. And Sky had little magical ability, if any. Instinctively, Sky moved back and put her hands in the air.

Alex had no trouble seeing Gondoleery now. The high priest raised her hand and pointed toward Sky.

Alex had no time to think. He slowed, raised his spell component with an aching arm, focused on Gondoleery, and let it fly, yelling at the top of his lungs, “Pulverize!”

At the shout, Gondoleery turned. She saw Alex and leaped toward Sky, trying to dodge whatever it was he'd cast. Sky grabbed the old woman by the face and pulled her to the ground, then tried to fight off the high priest's kicks and punches.

Lani's
disguise began to melt, and all too slowly she began changing once more into the Lani everybody knew. She floundered inside the suit with her mishmash of Sully/Lani body parts, trying frantically to get the clothes off so she could help. Carina, still skewered, dove at Samheed, knocking him to the ground, and rolled him over, desperate to put out the flames.

Alex's clear component sailed slowly through the air, trying to reach its intended target. But Alex had been too far away and his body too spent to give it the proper launch. With Gondoleery rolling on the ground with Sky, the tiny component hit the side of the vehicle and bounced to the ground.

Then, with an excruciating cracking sound, the entire jalopy imploded, shattering into a billion tiny pieces. Alex watched in horror.

Lani dove for cover, still tangled in the suit. Gondoleery paused in her fight with Sky to see what the noise was, and Sky clocked her with all her might, three fast blows right in the face, knocking the old woman unconscious. And Charlie, behind Alex, came running soundlessly, except for his little footsteps, toward the huge pile of dust that had once been the vehicle. His arms were flailing, and his mouth was open in a silent scream.

A
lex gaped at the giant pile of dust that had once been a vehicle, and then he looked at his injured friends and began running once more, this time somehow finding new energy from his tremendous fear. He had to stop this! He couldn't lose another friend! He ripped through his pockets, desperate for heart attack spells, knowing full well he wouldn't find any because he refused to carry them. He'd vowed never to use them again after Mr. Today's death. And it had made sense for him then. But Gondoleery was a different matter, and it dawned on him that she was not just the most powerful ruler Quill had ever seen—she was
more powerful than Alex and all his friends combined. And because she seemed to have no moral sense at all, she was a hundred times more dangerous than he'd ever imagined.

“Are you okay, Sky?” Alex shouted as he neared.

Sky lay on her back, chest heaving from the fight with Gondoleery, and then attempted to shove the limp woman off her. She stuck a hand in the air, indicating she was all right.

“What the heck just happened?” Samheed muttered, on his back at the side of the road. He stared glassy-eyed at the sky, and then at Carina, who was struggling to get off of him. She winced and fell, holding her ice-pierced arm close to her body.

As Alex reached them, fearing the worst, Samheed struggled to his feet, his clothing still smoldering. He beat what was left of his shirt with his fists, tamping out the last burning orange shreds. Not far away, Lani finally got the enormous suit off and ran to help Sky untangle herself from the unconscious high priest.

Carina rose to her feet. She grimaced, gripped the end of the ice blade, and yanked it out of her shoulder. She let out a ragged cry, nearly sinking to her knees from the pain, but then
rallied. When she caught her breath, she held the ice out to Alex. “Break the clean part off,” she said weakly. “Give it to Sam for his burns.”

Alex nodded and cracked the ice over his knee. He tossed the bloody end to the ground and handed the other half to Samheed.

“The ice . . . will help the burns on your skin,” Carina told Samheed.

Samheed held the ice, staring at it.

Alex sprang to help. “Put it against your chest,” he said. “Like this.”

“He's dazed,” Carina said. “You all right, Sam?” she asked him.

Samheed shook his head a little as if just waking up. “Yeah. I'm okay.”

“Good.” With Alex helping Samheed, Carina turned to her wound, then gripped her shoulder tightly to try to stop the blood that flowed from it.

With Alex's help, Samheed gently pressed the ice to his chest, moving it over the burned skin and wincing as it went. “That was horrible,” he said. He pulled the ice away. “It's cold.”

“Yeah,” said Alex, peering at Samheed's burns. He took the
ice and continued to do what Carina had instructed.

“We need to kill her,” Samheed mumbled. He reached into the pockets of his Necessary disguise and pulled out melted and charred spell components, examining them and then dropping them to the ground. They were all ruined.

Sky and Lani limped over. “The high priest is out cold.”

“Good work,” Alex said.

“Are you going to finish her off, Al?” asked Samheed, who was beginning to sound more like his old self.

Alex looked over at Gondoleery. Her body was twisted, and a bruise had begun to swell around the old woman's eye. He frowned. “I don't have anything else lethal.”

“What, you only made one component that did
that
?” Samheed asked, pointing to the giant pile of dust that Charlie was desperately digging through. Sky was the first to notice the gargoyle, and she watched him, puzzled.

“Yes,” replied Alex. “And that evidence is precisely the reason why. We don't need spells like that in circulation.”

“Maybe Carina has some good components—” Samheed began.

Sky interrupted. “What is Charlie doing over there?”

Alex and Lani looked over, and then they both gasped. “Oh no!” cried Alex. He dashed toward Charlie.

“It's Matilda,” Lani said. “She was hidden in the trunk!” She followed Alex to Charlie's side.

Sky went to help too. “Do you think Matilda is pulverized because she was inside the vehicle?”

“I don't know,” Alex said grimly. “She was the only one touching it when it happened.” His chest tightened, and a grim realization came over him. Not just Matilda's life had been in danger when he cast that spell. He could have hit Lani, or Sky, or . . . The thought sickened him. “What was I thinking, making that thing?” he muttered, digging through the pile of remains. “What a stupid move. Please . . . she
has
to be okay.”

Samheed, who was still reeling a bit and had stayed back, now turned to Carina. “How is your shoulder? Wait—Carina?” She stood slightly bent, her eyes glazed, her face expressionless. “Carina? Are you okay?”

“Hfff,” she said, and dropped slowly to her knees. Her eyes rolled back into her head, and she fell face-first in the dirt and lay eerily still.

The back of her shirt was soaked in blood.

S
amheed dropped the ice and stumbled to Carina's side just as a shout rose up from Lani.

“I can feel something solid!” she said, covered in tiny dustlike particles. “Just here, straight down. An arm, I think.”

Alex, Lani, Sky, and Charlie altered their search, and soon they found both of Matilda's arms. They gripped them tightly, and on the count of three they pulled with all their might. From under hundreds of pounds of pulverized-vehicle dust, Matilda emerged, eyes wide, scared, and unblinking. They rushed to get her away from the dust and gently sat her down on the
road. Charlie hopped to her side, knelt down, and peered at her face, cupping her chin and stroking the dust from her cheek with the utmost care.