Pandora Gets Vain (Pandora (Hardback)) (11 page)

“Great Aphrodite, blessed Apollo, wise and wonderful Athena,” she thought. “It worked!”

Iole had scurried between the piles of skeletons, always keeping the eye in sight as she tried to get behind it. Approaching the wall of black mortar and bones, she crawled along its foundation for several meters. The chanting voice was close by, droning incessantly. Nearing the base of a pile of skeletons, there was suddenly a bright flash from the eye. A warm wind blew past her and she was pelted with chunks, shards, and splinters of wood. Immediately she turned her face away and threw her hands up to protect the back of her head.

Two bony hands grabbed her wrists and Iole was yanked onto her feet, her face inches away from two bulging eyes, a row of hideous yellow teeth, and tufts of matted black hair.

The only thing missing . . . was half of the flesh.

The chanting had stopped. When the dust settled there was nothing but silence in the great chamber. The eye was still there, glowing a dull white, the invisible barrier was still in place, and Pandy was still hovering high in the air. The only motion in the room was the slow spread of blood across the front of Pandy’s toga.

Pandy looked all over the chamber. A sudden movement caught her eye. Two figures, one surely that of a man and the other, a tiny figure, were struggling by the back wall of bones. Pandy quickly looked to her friends, but before she could count the shapes behind the barrier, she felt herself moving through the air—over another pole.

And the chanting resumed.

Something deep within her, she could not say exactly what, gave a tiny snort, which traveled up her throat, around her brain, and shot out of her mouth.

This was ridiculous.

“I can do it again, you know!”

Quickly calculating the closest pole, she focused her mind again. From somewhere far below, she heard a shrill voice commanding something to “let go!” but deliberately ignored whatever it might be. Concentrating, she waited for the silence that would come when her powers were strongest.

And there it was. Pure quiet.

Five meters away, the top of the pole began to smoke, then glow, then flame. The pole quivered slightly, but this time, instead of a streak of fire splitting it down the center, the whole thing just exploded.

A chunk of wood shot through the great, hovering eye, causing a ripple in the light.

Her hearing returned, but there was stillness below. After a long, long pause, the light pulsed again and Pandy was moving once more.

“Okay, now I’m mad!” she shouted.

She destroyed five more poles before she realized she was floating much faster than before and the chanting was continuing throughout every blast.

“Bring it on!” she cried, exploding three more. Any pain from the wound in her stomach was pushed aside as her skill at being able to concentrate quickly was growing, shaping, and sharpening itself moment by moment.

Ten more poles shattered.

Instead of growing weary, Pandy’s brain called upon all its energy reserves, diverting all thought to the task at hand.

Three more poles incinerated.

And twenty more after that.

Wood shards were flying pell-mell all over the chamber like bats suddenly exposed to sunlight.

Finally, every upright pole in the entire burial chamber had been reduced to ashes.

And still Pandy hung in midair. With nothing left to burn, her brain allowed other parts of itself to open back up. Her arms and legs now ached, feeling incredibly heavy. The pain from her wound was intense. The muscles in her back and neck were strained from being forced to bow. She was completely exhausted.

“Let go of me!” Iole yelled, trying frantically to free herself from the decaying hands. She twisted herself like a banner in a high wind, fighting the grip of the living corpse. As the first rush of hot air blasted past them, the figure glared upward at Pandora and Iole caught a snarl on the decomposing lips.

“Your power is no match for Horus,” the figure muttered in a foreign tongue, his head craned back, exposing his cracked neck bones. He turned back toward Iole, baring yellow teeth.

“Her blood would have met my needs. But yours will do.”

“I don’t know what you’re saying, you . . . you . . . fiend!” Iole said, trying to kick at the exposed shinbones and kneecaps. The corpse, still clutching her tiny wrists, lifted her off her feet and was pulling her toward its gaping jaws. Iole saw the lips parting again and realized in a panic that the creature meant to bite her!

Just then a shard of wood flew through the open mouth and into the skull where it rattled around, sounding like a musical instrument.

They were both blown backward by the force of the next pole exploding. The corpse dropped Iole and turned to look around the chamber as one by one the thick impaling poles were being decimated.

“Bite me? I think not!” Iole said, running as fast as she could, then hiding behind a particularly large pile of bones, from which she could watch the corpse and Pandy and keep herself from being pummeled with debris.

“Why am I still up here?” Pandy thought after the dust from the last pole settled.

And then she saw it . . . in a far corner. Glinting with the light from the eye. One last pole she hadn’t noticed because of its dark color. This one was made of metal— bronze, she thought, from the color of the sheen, and it was engraved with hundreds of symbols, much like the murals on the walls around her. The skeleton on it was still clothed in fine, rich fabrics and a golden, multijeweled ring hung precariously at the end of a finger.

Once more she was moved through the air. Once more she heard the chanting, only this time it was as a whisper, concentrated and fervent. Once more she summoned her will and focused, directing her power over fire at the long piece of metal.

Nothing happened. She couldn’t even tell if the pole was getting warm. Except that, even though the pole was at least twenty meters ahead of her, she was aware of descending slightly. Pandy gave a quick glance at the terrible eye; the light around it flickered.

“It’s weakening,” she thought.

But so was she.

As the power of the eye decreased, so did its ability to suspend her in midair. If she was dropped she could be killed, but she instinctively knew that this had become a fight to the very finish.

She dropped another meter.

She turned her focus back to the bronze pole, and saw to her utter shock that the pole was beginning to shine very brightly, small rivulets of metal beginning to run down the sides. A flash made her glance at the jeweled ring, still holding fast to the bony hand, but melting now, golden drops and gems falling to the ground below.

“The heat is going through the bones,” she thought.

And then she realized that something, somewhere, was totally, totally, totally . . . wrong.

There was no way she should have been able to heat the metal that quickly, if at all. She had only concentrated for a moment before she turned away to look at the eye. And she was so, so tired.

She dropped again with a jolt, the pole now only about eight meters in the distance. As she watched, the bronze completely washed away, revealing a smaller pole inside made of gold.

“Stop,” she thought. “Don’t think about it anymore.” She turned her thoughts away from heating the metal, shutting off her concentration entirely.

But it was too late. It was out of her control.

She was heading toward the ground, fast.

The golden pole, which even Pandy knew should have completely dissolved with such heat, was still standing upright, glowing as if lit from within.

She looked anywhere but directly at it, and tried to think about anything else: her dad and Xander and Mount Olympus and the volcano under the amphitheater back at school and the wall murals and why wasn’t this gold pole melted already?

Crash!

Pandy hit the ground with a thud.

Slowly getting to her feet, she stared up at the pole, only a meter away and now glowing a brilliant sunset red. She backed up into a pile of bones, made her way around two other piles, passed the intensely flickering eye, and watched as the pole began to shake violently.

“Ahh . . . ahh . . . ,” Pandy cried.

Then an otherworldly scream filled the chamber and the pole exploded into millions of pieces, raining molten gold.

A gold coating covered the closest bone piles and the walls were splattered from forty meters away. The terrible eye was so pelted that the flickering became furious until the eye finally collapsed in upon itself and disappeared altogether. The chamber was almost in complete darkness; the only light remaining was from the small fires consuming the last remnants of the wooden impaling poles.