The Secret of Ashona (53 page)

Trevor looked up at Erec with big brown eyes, confused. “Why are you doing this? Let me go.”

Erec gripped Trevor’s wrist harder. “That’s enough from you. Come with me.” His mouth winced into a fake smile. “I would never do anything to hurt you. Remember that.”

Trevor shook from head to toe as Erec dragged him down the hallway. He knocked on the tall wooden doors of the Inner Sanctum. When they swung open, he shoved Trevor inside and walked in behind him.

“Look what I have for you.” Erec grinned at Baskania.

“Wonderful!” Baskania beamed. “What a treat.”

“Enjoy him.” Erec dusted his hands off with a grin. “Thanks again for letting me serve you. It’s my pleasure.”

Baskania laughed with glee. A silver cage fell out of the air and over Trevor. Trevor put his little hands on the bars and gazed through at Erec with sad eyes. Erec felt a twinge of grief, but he pushed it aside. He had done what he needed, and that was all that mattered.

“How about a dragon?” Erec suggested. “I know one that I can deliver here. I thought that would be a nice next gift for you.”

Baskania strode over and patted Erec’s head with his hand. “Boy, you have turned out to be a pleasure for me. I’m so glad that we’ve gotten to know each other better and moved past that bad time we used to have.”

Erec was pleased. Baskania was happy now, and that’s what was important. Things just might turn out all right after all—if he played his cards right.

Rosco was not pleased when they were back at his apartment. “I don’t like this, Erec. Not one bit.”

“I don’t either—believe me. It’s not like I wanted to hand my brother over to him. But what else could I do? Trevor would die if I didn’t. And Baskania trusts me now. I’ve seen that Trevor won’t die right away, and maybe we could save him for good.” But the minute he said that, Erec felt sick. What was Trevor doing right now? He shuddered, not really wanting to know. But he would do whatever it took to get him out.

A thought slid into his mind like an icy snake, making him shudder. What about his vision of the future where he told Baskania to throw Trevor into a trash compactor? Why would he do that? He couldn’t . . . he wouldn’t . . . unless he could think of a way to turn that into something that might help Trevor. . . .

But, then again, didn’t that mean Trevor would be okay until Erec returned to talk about the trash compactor? At least he was somewhat safe.

“That’s not what I’m talking about.” Rosco ruffled his own hair with his hands, upset. “It’s terrible about Trevor, but I get it that there’s no choice. I’ve been thinking of ways to protect him there. But there’s something else, Erec. I’m starting to worry about
you
. I’m not liking what I’ve been seeing one bit.”

“What are you talking about? Me going to release the souls?
Because I’ve had some other thoughts about that—”

“No. Not the souls—although that’s also driving me crazy. I don’t like what’s happening between you and the Shadow Prince.”

Spartacus, who had been hanging out silently, jumped up and pointed at Erec. “Aha! I’m glad Rosco said it, because that’s been bothering me, too.”

“Huh?”

Rosco said, “Listen, I know what it’s like to be a kid, and finally have someone pay attention to you. Look up to you, even. Baskania knows how to get followers—real followers who will do anything for him. And he doesn’t do it by being a jerk to them. Baskania . . . if it makes sense for someone so crazy, evil, and selfish . . . well, he actually cares about people who are close to him, higher-ups who serve him. He cares about you—I can see it. And that’s dangerous. When someone that powerful heaps on the praise and starts giving you gifts, it’s hard not to like them back.”

“Are you saying that I’m becoming friends with the Shadow Prince?”

Spartacus clapped his hands together. “See! You would never have called him the Shadow Prince before. Only Baskania!” He looked at Rosco for confirmation, and then got frustrated that he couldn’t be heard. He pointed at Rosco. “Tell him I said that! Tell him, Erec! I want to know what Rosco thinks about that.”

Erec ignored Spartacus. “Listen, I’m not going to be friends with . . . Baskania. You do realize I hate his guts, right?”

“I don’t know,” Rosco said. “I saw the way you were talking with him. You were losing your resolve, I think. That’s how it starts. I lived through it, remember?”

Spartacus picked Erec up and held him onto the ceiling, to the surprise of Rosco.
“Tell him what I said!”

“Okay! Just put me down, then . . . Rosco, Spartacus wants to
point out that I never used to call Baskania the Shadow Prince before now. Are you happy?”

“Yes.” Spartacus put Erec on the couch.

“He has a good point.”

“See!” Spartacus looked delighted.

“I’m just telling you, from the outside you started looking a little starstruck, a little appreciative. That’s how it began with me. It was all great at first. Who would start a friendship with someone like that if it wasn’t great? He was supportive, noticed my abilities, and let me know it. He gave me things—he can be really generous. But, before long I found myself doing things back for him. And even though they made sense in a twisted way, some of them were truly awful. He trusted me and relied on me. And in turn I committed murders, hurt people, stole things. Acted in ways I never thought I could do. And I became the Rosco Kroc you know—the one who Oscar went back in time to get rid of and do everyone a favor.”

“The Rosco Kroc I know is a great person. It doesn’t matter what you did in the past for that guy. I know he can con people. You were a kid, and all alone back then too. There was nobody else that you trusted. It’s not like you went out on your own and did all of those things. Someone who you believed in was telling you to do them. But you’re my friend again now. The past is the past.”

“I don’t know that I can ever make up for what I’ve done. But I’ll try.”

Erec held a hand up. “I’m not getting sucked in by him, don’t worry. Even when he starts to make sense, I think of what he’s done to Bethany, what he could do to Trevor . . . and I’ll never get those images out of my head.”

“Good.”

“I just wish I knew what to do about the Furies. Talking to Bethany, I realized that freeing all the souls would be a huge problem.
If the Furies go back to Tartarus, Baskania would give them more souls again, like last time. He’d retry his plan to let them out if they serve him. The Furies would be released and would wipe humans off the face of the planet, like they were planning to the first time—and I’d be the reason they hate humans. We’d all die, basically.”

“You’re right.”

Spartacus dropped the spell book on Erec’s lap. “Guess it’s over, then. You went to all that trouble to get Tarvos’s horns. Do you still want to learn the time-stopping spell now?”

Erec could hear the tension in the ghost’s voice. It wasn’t until now that he thought about how all of this affected Spartacus. He had given up his own soul to let Erec have his back. He deserved to have his soul returned—just like all of the other specters that had lost theirs. He never complained about it, never talked about how bad it felt being soulless—but Erec knew what it had been like.

In fact, Spartacus wouldn’t be around much longer. The only reason he was here was to help Erec free the souls. Soon he would go to the Furies and see if they would destroy him, or ask Aoquesth to do it. He had made that clear.

“Spartacus—I’m sorry I haven’t talked to
you
about this. You’re the first person that I should have discussed it with. This was our plan together, from the beginning. . . .”

“Hey, don’t worry about it, kid. I hadn’t thought about all of that stuff either, but it’s true. Of course Baskania would just release the Furies again, and they’d be all ready to go back to their old plan of killing everyone on the planet. Not a great option.”

“But I’m not giving up on those souls yet either.”

“Are you crazy?” Spartacus shot him an incredulous look. “I’ve given up. See? All done. Finished. Next problem.”

“There has to be a way. I’ve gotten something from Baskania that might help us.”

“You mean that mousetrap thing? I was there when he handed it to you. But even he said that he didn’t have anything powerful enough to destroy Tartarus with.”

“I have something that might work.” Erec pulled the little pink brain out of his pocket.

“What’s that?” Rosco asked.

But Spartacus’s eyes widened. “You still have Tarvos’s power source? I thought that you gave it to Baskania.”

“He took the Master Shem, and he asked for this, but then he got sidetracked with Connor and my old memories, and he never actually took it from me.” Erec explained to Rosco, “This was the thing that gave Tarvos the ability to collect all the soulless people in the world and turn them into Golems.”

“Wow.” They all stared at the little pink thing for a while, wondering if it had enough power to do the trick.

“I don’t even know how to use it.”

Rosco picked it up and looked it over. “Well, it’s a power source. Usually that just means it increases your current load of power. So if you’re holding it in your hand, and you try to do magic, it will be amplified.”

“So, if I wanted to blast a hole in Tartarus, the prison of the three Furies, then . . .”

“What?” Rosco looked at Erec sideways. “Isn’t that a little much? I mean, even Baskania couldn’t do that with his abilities alone. He needed to find a super-powerful magic item to use.”

“But this is super-powerful. Maybe it will be enough.” Then Erec had a better idea. “If it amplifies people’s powers, then why don’t you use it instead of me? You can do a lot more than I can.”

Rosco looked at the pink thing skeptically. “It would have to multiply what I could do by thousands in order for that to work.”

“Well, just think of all that Tarvos could do from this alone. He
wasn’t even magical without it. This let him speak, point a finger at you and kill you if he wanted . . .”

Rosco studied the brainlike thing for a while. “I guess that would be amplification by thousands of times.” He smiled. “I guess it couldn’t hurt to try. But as far as who has more magical ability—I know far more magic than you do, maybe more than you ever will. Who knows, though, which of us has more inner strength? There is no way to test that, because I’ve just had far more experience.”

“You use the thing. We can’t be that far off from each other, anyway. Both of us can do things that most people can’t, like finger magic.”

“I’m happy to give it a try. Let’s see that power source.”

Erec handed it to Rosco, who gingerly held the small pink brain. He lifted his finger and flicked it toward the wall.

A fifteen-foot fireball shot out of his finger. Everything was fire and heat all around them. Crashes and explosions filled the air, and smoke blinded them all. All around, they were engulfed by flames.

Rosco said a few words with both of his hands out, waving in front of him. In a moment, the fire was gone. Along with it, most of his apartment building had been eaten away. The couch that they were sitting on was charred, and the floor under it was black, but the side of the floor near the far wall was gone. All of the walls on that side of the apartment were missing now, and Erec looked straight out into the air, as if they were sitting on a perch in the sky.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Amplified Magic

R
OSCO LOOKED AROUND
him in shock. “I can’t believe it. I just tried to send a little test flame out toward the wall. A little test flame!” He took a deep breath and looked around. “I’m going to try to fix this myself, but it might take time.”

Spartacus was gone, but he returned a moment later and shook Erec’s shoulder. “Tell Rosco everyone is okay. He’s worried sick about it. Not a lot of people were in the building, and only one person was stuck. She was under collapsed floorboards that fell from above her,
but I got her out okay. Other people are upset, but nobody is hurt.”

“Spartacus just saved one person, and he said everyone else here is okay.”

“Thank him for me. Thanks, Spartacus.”