Elliot and the Last Underworld War (17 page)

“Water!” the twins yelled and sprayed Kovol again, but this time he was ready. He used a shield to push the stream of water back onto Elliot’s family. Kyle and Cole dropped the hose, and everyone scattered behind the nearest tree, bush, or rock where they could fit.

Elliot had chosen a thick bush off to the right. From there he saw Wendy and Reed behind nearby oak trees, dripping wet. The twins had squeezed together behind a large rock. Cami was in another bush. And…where was Tubs?

Elliot peeked out to where Tubs stood facing Kovol. In his hands was another rock.

Kovol looked confused. “You’re not running,” he said.

Tubs’s eyes narrowed. “I know all about you, jerk. You’re just another bully, a loser who tries to make himself feel better by hurting others. I know that, because I used to be a bully too.”

“Nobody insults Kovol,” the Demon said.

“I used to think nobody insulted me either,” Tubs answered. “They do, but they say the insults behind your back. You should’ve heard what the kids used to say about me.”

Elliot was pretty sure a lot of kids still said those things about Tubs. But it was true—ever since Elliot had stood up to Tubs, he didn’t bully people anymore.

“I’m the most powerful creature in the world!” Kovol yelled.

Tubs snorted. “If you were powerful, you wouldn’t have to be mean. Elliot’s the nicest kid I know, and he’s more powerful than you’ll ever be!”

Kovol roared. Then Tubs threw the rock at him, which bounced off his chest like a rubber ball. Kovol widened his hands for some magic.

“No!” Elliot leapt from his hiding place and dove for Tubs to knock him out of the way. However, just as before when they had played Capture the Flag, Tubs wasn’t going anywhere. He was a lot thicker than Elliot, so Elliot only crashed into the side of Tubs’s body and landed on the ground.

Tubs grabbed Elliot’s arm and yanked him to his feet, then said, “If I don’t get to bully this dork, then nobody does!” Tubs’s idea of friendship, Elliot figured.

“Everyone start throwing things,” Elliot yelled. “Whatever you can find!”

From their hiding places, Elliot’s family and Cami threw rocks, sticks, and whatever else they had. Wendy threw a tube of her favorite lipstick. Reed threw packages of pickle relish. Cami threw some coins from her pocket. At first Elliot wasn’t sure what the twins were throwing, but then he recognized them as the burned chicken nuggets from Wendy’s dinner last night. He didn’t blame them. If his pants pockets weren’t full of holes, he’d have hidden his dinner there too. He wondered whether Wendy would be happy or angry to learn that her dinner had just been turned into a weapon. Probably a little of both.

None of the items hurt Kovol, but they distracted him. He couldn’t defend against everything, so he tried just zapping the items as they got close to him.

The distraction gave Elliot a chance to run behind Kovol. He might not have any magic yet for a fight, but when he did have magic earlier he had prepared something special for a moment just like this.

Once Elliot had gotten a good head start, he yelled at Kovol, “Tubs was right. You’re nothing but a bully. I’m not afraid of you, and you’ll never catch me.”

Then he ran. If Elliot had learned anything from his days of being bullied, it was how to run away.

Still, Kovol was catching up to him fast, and the place Elliot wanted to get to was farther away than he remembered. But every plan has a point where there’s no turning back. Elliot was way, way past that point.

Kovol started sending shots of magic forward, almost like lasers. They hit the trees beside Elliot, punching huge holes through their trunks. Elliot began running in a zigzag pattern so that Kovol wouldn’t know where his target would be next.

The zigzag slowed Elliot down, and Kovol was still getting closer. If he hadn’t been so interested in hitting Elliot with magic, he might have figured out that he could probably grab Elliot if he reached out far enough.

Just ahead was a patch of ground with a brown haze over it. Elliot headed directly for it. He recognized the carefully laid-out leaves where he had magically marked the place where he should jump. When he reached it, he leapt forward as far as he could.

Kovol clearly didn’t know the leaves were a signal to jump. He continued running forward…straight into the gripping mud…again.

“There’s no gripping mud on the surface world,” Kovol said, thrashing at the mud.

Elliot stopped and turned back to him. “There is now.” He raised his hand to see if he had any magic to use on Kovol, but still there was nothing. He didn’t think Kovol had gotten all of his magic, but he’d taken a lot of it, and he needed time to build it up again. Time was the one thing Elliot didn’t have. (Well, that, and a solid gold time machine, but he wasn’t thinking about that just then.)

“I can still fight you from here,” Kovol growled.

“Not if you can’t see me,” Elliot said, already running away. “Until then, you’re stuck.”

Elliot left the mud pit and ran toward his brothers and sister, who were on their way to find him. Wendy grabbed him first and closed him into a hug almost as tightly as the way Kovol had squished him before.

“Okay, okay.” Elliot pushed away until he could breathe. “I’m fine.”

“Hey, Elliot,” Kyle said. “Me and Cole were thinking that if you’re the king of these cookies—”

“Brownies.”

“Yeah, Brownies. If you’re the king, then what can we be?”

Cole punched a fist into the air. “We want to be your royal knights of the round table.”

“I don’t have a round table,” Elliot said. “And I don’t have any knights.”

“Still, this is pretty big news,” Reed said. “I thought it was exciting when I got that promotion last month at the Quack Shack, but that wasn’t nearly as cool as this.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell any of you,” Elliot said. “I couldn’t, or else the Brownies would have gone away forever. And they needed my help.”

“That’s forgiven,” Wendy said. “But now that we know, we want to help you. Cami said you have magic.”

Elliot shrugged. “Kovol pulled most of the magic out of me. The Brownies say that when they use their magic too much, they have to wait a while until it works again, sort of like recharging a battery. All I can hope is that I have enough magic left to charge up.”

“Where’s Kovol now?” Cami asked.

“Stuck in gripping mud.” Elliot didn’t have time to explain what gripping mud was, but his siblings didn’t seem too curious. As long as Kovol was stuck, that seemed to be all they cared about.

“So send all of your Underworld friends to get him now,” Reed said.

Elliot shook his head. “That won’t work. Even stuck in the mud, he’s still powerful enough to put up a good fight. As soon as it’s dark enough, he’ll call his army to help him get out. They’re called Shadow Men, and they’re just as scary as they sound. I don’t want to fight Kovol anymore until I know I can win. It’s time to end this.” He looked at Cami. “Where’s Harold?”

“He’s still afraid to make another mistake.” Cami frowned. “He said if he does, then I might not like him back. I told him nobody cares when people make mistakes. They only care when people don’t try to fix them.”

“So is he coming?”

Cami shrugged. “He said he’ll think about it.”

“Oh, good grief,” Elliot said with a sigh. “Where’s the turnip juice?”

She handed it to him. “Here. But you said it isn’t ready yet.”

“It’s not. And I really don’t know how to get that last ingredient.” Then he remembered that his sister’s food sometimes tasted a little strange. “Hey, Wendy, you don’t happen to cook with earwax, do you?”

She made a face. “Ha-ha.”

“No, seriously. Last week you made some cookies. I kind of thought—”

“I don’t cook with earwax!”

He held up a hand. “No, I didn’t think so.” At least a big part of him had hoped not.

“You need earwax?” Tubs stuck his finger in his ear and pulled out a slimy clump. “I’ve got some.”

“Thanks, Tubs,” Elliot said. “But I need a lot of it for this potion to work.”

“How much do you need?” Tubs reached into his pocket and pulled out a plastic sandwich bag with a huge blob of earwax inside. It was every color of gross, and so large he must have been collecting it for years.

“Disgusting!” Cami said. “How long have you had that?”

“Since I started preschool,” Tubs said. “Do you like it?”

“No!” Cami and Wendy said together.

“Yes!” Kyle and Cole said at the same time.

Reed said nothing. Either he didn’t have a very strong opinion on the subject of earwax collections, or else he was too grossed out to speak.

Elliot held out his hand for the earwax. “Well, I love it. Can I have it?”

Tubs pulled it closer to himself. “I dunno. I almost threw it at Kovol before, when we were all throwing things, but then I remembered how long I’ve been working on this collection. I can’t just give it away for nothing.”

“How about to save the world?” Elliot said.

“Yeah, I guess that is pretty important.” Tubs thought it over. “Will they print my name in the newspaper about what a hero I am?”

“Probably not. We’ll never really be able to talk about what happened here.”

Wendy stepped forward. “But I’ll make you some of those cookies that Elliot says tasted like earwax. A whole plate of them. And maybe they’ll be helpful in getting your head to make more earwax.”

Tubs smiled as if that actually made sense to him. “Yeah, I’ll save the world with this bag of earwax. And who knows? Maybe I can use the next glob to save the universe!”

Elliot didn’t think earwax worked that way. But at least Tubs handed him the plastic bag.

Cami knelt on the ground and opened the bottle of turnip juice. Being careful not to touch any of it, Elliot pushed the earwax out of the bag and into the bottle. It plopped to the bottom in a big clump.

“Now stir that in with a stick!” Wendy said.

“Or just shake it up,” Reed said. “That’s how we mix things at the Quack Shack.”

While Wendy and Reed argued about whether the drink should be shaken or stirred, Elliot put the lid on and held it under his arm. He didn’t think either one mattered. Minthred hadn’t mixed it up, so neither would he. Besides, if he got Kovol to drink it, it was all going down in one swallow anyway.

“How’s your magic doing?” Cole asked. “Is it back yet?”

“I don’t think so,” Elliot said.

“It had better hurry,” Kyle said. “It’s getting dark.”

Elliot had noticed the same thing. In the woods, the trees were taller and the leaves denser, so it always felt dark earlier here than it would in Sprite’s Hollow. And it definitely was getting late. At least, Elliot had felt his hungry stomach rumbling for some time.

A cool wind washed over Elliot’s face. As long as the breeze was cool, that was only the weather. But any moment now the wind would shift, coming from Kovol’s direction. And it would feel warm, even hot. It would be a signal that the Shadow Men had come.

“What happens now?” Reed asked.

Elliot’s original plan with the potion had required the use of magic. He didn’t have that option now, and he really wasn’t sure how to trick Kovol into drinking the potion.

“Tell him you have this yummy drink and he can’t have any of it,” Cami said. “People always want things more if they know they can’t have it.”