Rebels of the Lamp, Book 1 (18 page)

Parker looked at the professor with a new sense of who she was.

“Julia? Really?” he said.

“Shut up,” said Professor Ellison.

“THIS IS A MISTAKE,” FON-RAHM SAID.

They were hiding in the dark, crouched behind a low wall overlooking the crippled museum. It was a blocky monstrosity without windows or adornment, an ugly building, dingy, rundown, and sad even
by Soviet standards. In its prime it would have been unpleasant. Now it was downright depressing.

“The Path is not to be trifled with. We should proceed with patience.”

“We should go now,” said Parker. “We don’t have time for games.”

“There is always time for caution.”

Professor Ellison said, “The boy is right. We don’t even know if they’ll be here in the morning, and if they leave we may not be able to follow them. Tonight we can catch them
by surprise.”

They ducked lower as a Path guard made his rounds. He passed right by their wall and stopped. Reese held her breath, but the guard only shifted his rifle’s strap from one shoulder to the
other. Then he picked his nose and went on his way.

“He’s the only guard on this side,” whispered Parker.

Theo checked his watch. “I’ve been timing him. He goes the same way over and over. He’ll be back here in seventy seconds.”

“I have something in here that will turn him to ash,” said the professor as she dug into her bag. “That way his family can save money on the cremation.”

“No! We don’t have to kill him,” Reese said. “We can create a diversion and sneak past him.” She rooted around in her brain for something to justify her idea.
“That’s what they did in
A Tale of Two Cities
.”

“One of these days you’ll have to get over your squeamishness, my dear.”

“Or maybe you can just stop killing everybody that we meet.”

While Reese and the professor argued, the guard made his turn and came back to the wall. Theo picked up a baseball-sized rock, took careful aim, and simply beaned the guy in the head with it.
The guard folded like a map.

Parker stared, openmouthed, at his cousin.

“What?” said Theo.

They pried off some boards and made their way in through a side door. As bad as the building was from the outside, the inside was worse. The floor was marble and the walls were
stained concrete. A few old paintings still hung at weird angles. Broken statues lay on the floor in pieces. It was dark and scary. It smelled like mildew.

Fon-Rahm pointed the way. “I can sense Xaru and one other. They are this way.”

They started to walk through the looted museum.

“I can’t help feeling we should be armed,” said Theo.

“Guns are for simpletons,” the professor said. “And they’re unnecessary. All we need to do is get within eyesight. I’ll cast one spell to trap the genies and
another to”—she glanced over at Reese—“
incapacitate
the Path.”

Theo said, “Yeah, well, I would still feel better if one of us had an Uzi.”

The professor locked eyes with Theo. “You’re not wrong to distrust magic, Theo, but I believe you’ll find it’s sometimes necessary.” Ellison paused. “Perhaps
I might even teach you a few things. Better you than”—she glanced at Parker—“someone who lacks self-control. Nothing major, of course, but enough to test the extent of your
gifts.”

“I’m tested enough already, thanks.”

“You should give it some thought. It’s not an offer I make lightly, and it may not be repeated.”

Professor Ellison walked on. Theo stared at the ground and followed behind her.

They crept down a long, soggy hallway and up a curving flight of stairs. As they passed a water-damaged Renaissance painting of a woman, naked except for a strategically placed bedsheet, Parker
did a double take. He went in for a closer look and then turned to Professor Ellison.

“Is that
you
?” he asked incredulously.

“I got around,” the professor said with a shrug. Reese grabbed Parker by the arm and pulled him away from the painting.

When they got closer to the museum’s center, Fon-Rahm motioned for them to be quiet. They all took cover behind a pile of crates and shattered chunks of concrete. They peeked out and saw
that they were perched on the edge of a round walkway that looked over a domed atrium. There were holes in the dome, and two stories down, the legs of what was once a giant statue of a Greek
athlete stood atop a crumbling pedestal.

They saw Xaru, pacing as he screamed at his minions.

“Find her! Is that too much to ask?” he fumed. “I recognize that you are lower life-forms, but even for humans you are unconscionably stupid. I would have been better off with
camels!”

Fon-Rahm spoke in a whisper. “Good. They are distracted.” He turned to Professor Ellison. She was pulling the two empty lamps from Theo’s bag. The genie regarded her with
mistrust. “I have your word that you will not try to trap me.”

“I won’t. Not yet, at least.”

“Fair enough. Do you need anything before you begin?”

“No,” she said, “but you might want to get a mop.”

“Why?” asked Parker.

“Because when they realize what I’m up to they may very well wet their pants.”

The professor made a few last-minute adjustments to the open containers. Then she stood, her arms wide to the sky, and opened her mouth to start the incantation. Before she could get a single
word out, Yogoth materialized out of thin air behind her.

They had walked directly into a trap.

“PROFESSOR ELLISON!” REESE SCREAMED.

It didn’t do any good. The ugly brute Yogoth grabbed the professor with his four arms. He used one hand to bat away her bag of tricks, and another to cover her mouth so she couldn’t
speak. Fon-Rahm rushed him, but the drooling genie was faster than he looked. He batted Fon-Rahm over the railing, where he landed heavily at Xaru’s feet.

Xaru regarded Fon-Rahm with some amusement. “Bring the witch and the children down to me,” he said, and three Path members stepped out of the shadows to seize Parker, Theo, and
Reese. Two more Path members took control of Professor Ellison from Yogoth. They were careful to keep one hand clamped over her mouth.

On the ground floor, Fon-Rahm shook off Yogoth’s hit and reached for Xaru.

“Oh, Yogoth,” called Xaru. The four-armed genie leaped from the rail and landed directly on Fon-Rahm, forcing him to back to the ground. Then he grabbed Fon-Rahm by the legs, swung
him in a circle, and let him go. Fon-Rahm was thrown through a wall and into the next room. Yogoth followed him through the hole to finish him off.

Reese squirmed in her captor’s arms. She knew that Parker would be in pain. She was right. Parker tried not to show it, but his eyes were watering and his teeth were clenched. His head was
on fire.

As Fon-Rahm and Yogoth battled in the other room, the Path members hauled the kids and Professor Ellison down to the atrium. Xaru smiled warmly.

“And now we’re all together,” he said, gently touching Reese’s cheek. Theo put all his strength into breaking his captor’s grip, but the thug outweighed him by a
hundred pounds. He didn’t have a chance.

Xaru shook his head. “Humans. Really. It’s all too pathetic.” Then he raised his voice so he could be heard over the sounds of the brawl in the next room. “You might as
well come out now.”

Maksimilian stepped into the atrium. Professor Ellison squirmed in the arms of her abductor and stared knives into him. Maks averted his eyes.

“So we’re good now?” he said. “You’ll call off the Path?”

Xaru stood directly in front of Professor Ellison, enjoying her anger. “Of course. You may go back to your little life, secure in the knowledge that you are a traitor to your own
kind.”

Maksimilian turned to leave, desperate to be anywhere else.

“I’m sorry, Julia,” he said. “May we meet again in happier times.”

Maks put his head down and left the museum. Professor Ellison couldn’t do anything besides close her eyes and wish that things were different.

There was a mighty crash, and Yogoth was thrown through the wall and into the atrium. He landed near Xaru, bent iron bars pinning his four arms to his sides.

Fon-Rahm, angry, stepped through the hole in the wall. “This is absurd, Xaru. I can defeat any of our brothers, and you and I could fight for centuries without one of us declaring
victory.”

“How right you are, Fon-Rahm,” said Xaru. “Such a flawed plan seems out of character for me. It’s almost as if I were only trying to distract you for a few
moments.”

“Distract me? Distract me from what?”

Fon-Rahm whipped his head around, but he had figured it out too late. Nadir had been training for this moment for years. He was dressed in a robe passed down through generations and covered with
arcane runes. His arms were raised, his mind was focused, and he was chanting an ancient spell. Winds whirled around him.

Fon-Rahm’s empty lamp was set in front of him, open and waiting to welcome the genie home.

THE WIND TOOK FON-RAHM AND
spun him around the room like a leaf in a hurricane. The genie bounced off the walls and tried desperately to find
something, anything to grab on to. It was no use. He was pulled down and, in a haze of fog and brimstone, sucked back into the lamp. Nadir finished his spell and threw his arms to his side. The
lamp sealed itself and began to faintly glow. Fon-Rahm was gone.

Parker fell to his knees. There was no hope now. His captor dragged him back to his feet.

If Xaru felt anything at all, it didn’t show. “Good,” he said. He turned to his prisoners. “Now, then. Tarinn, my old friend, I am well aware that you have, in your
possession, one or two other recovered lamps. I have given some thought as to how I might discover where you’re hiding them, and I have decided that torturing you until you tell me is
probably the most fun.”

One of the minions holding the professor pulled out a knife.

“She would rather die than talk!” said Parker. Easy for him to say, thought Reese. No one was threatening to cut his throat.

“Well, let’s see!” said Xaru cheerfully. “Start with her left eye and then take her nose,” he instructed the Path member. “After that we’ll get
creative.”

Professor Ellison looked truly scared. The goon with the knife pulled back her hair and held the blade inches from her left eye. She locked her mouth shut. She would never talk.

It was Theo who finally broke. “No! Stop! I know where the lamps are!”

Parker said, “Theo, shut up!”

“
You
shut up! They’re going to kill her!”

“They’ll kill her if you tell them!”

Theo turned to Xaru. “I’ll tell you, if you promise to let us go.”

Xaru put his hand over where his heart would be, if he had a heart.

“I promise,” he said.

“He’s lying! Theo!” said Parker.

Theo shut him out. “She has a secret space in the wall at her office at the university. I saw it. It’s a hiding place. I bet the lamps are in there.”

Parker deflated like an old balloon. He didn’t think Theo would really do it.

“Thank you. Now there is a levelheaded boy.” Xaru turned to the professor. “And you keep your entire face.”

Parker glared at his cousin. Theo looked at the ground.

Xaru walked over to help Yogoth, who was still struggling on the floor. “Now,” Xaru said, easily unbending the iron bars that trapped Yogoth’s arms. “Nadir. You and I,
along with my dear brother Yogoth, of course, will bring Tarinn back to her home, where she will give us the lamps. No doubt she protected it with some kind of a pesky spell. She was always so
clever.” He picked up Fon-Rahm’s lamp and admired the glow. “A mine in Belarus is set to be collapsed tomorrow. It reaches almost five miles into the earth. The rest of you are to
place this lamp gingerly at the bottom. When they destroy the mine, poor Fon-Rahm will be buried under millions of tons of rocks and dirt. Let’s see how long it takes him to find his way out
of
that
.”

He caressed the lamp in a cartoonish display of brotherly love.

“We could have shared the world,” he whispered to the lamp. Then he spoke to the Path. “Kill the children. Drop their bodies into the mine, as well. No use stirring up
trouble.”

“But, you said...” said Theo.

“Start with him,” said Xaru, nodding at Theo. “No one likes a snitch.”

PARKER EYED PROFESSOR ELLISON’S BAG.
It was plopped down against a wall, kicked aside and ignored in all the confusion. He didn’t
know any of the spells that went with the doodads inside, but he knew the bag was filled with powerful stuff. If he could reach it, he thought, he’d find some kind of magical talisman he
could use as a weapon. He would make the guards tell him where they had taken Fon-Rahm’s lamp, and he would figure out a way to stop Xaru from getting into the secret hiding place in
Professor Ellison’s office. He would save the world from genie domination. He would be a hero to Theo and Reese. His mom would be sorry she had treated him so badly. His dad would realize
that he had made a huge mistake in being so selfish and abandoning him.

If he could reach the bag.

But he couldn’t. Parker was sitting on the floor with Theo and Reese. Their backs were propped up against the base of the statue, and their feet were stretched out in front of them. Their
ankles and wrists were tied with rough, itchy nylon rope and, just to make things a little more uncomfortable for them, they were each gagged with a piece of cloth that smelled like sweat and
tasted salty. Parker could no more reach the bag than he could swim the Pacific Ocean with a motorcycle strapped to his back.

Xaru, Yogoth, and Nadir had taken the professor and four or five members of the Path back to New Hampshire. Some of the others grabbed Fon-Rahm’s lamp and left for the abandoned mine in
Belarus. The goons who remained behind were sitting around an old crate, playing cards in the dim light. They were pretty drunk. They goaded and insulted one another in whatever language it was
that they spoke. While they were distracted, Parker used a jagged crack in the marble pedestal to saw at his ropes, but he wasn’t getting anywhere. He hoped that they would play cards all
night.