Rebels of the Lamp, Book 1 (20 page)

Theo shook his head and pointed to his left. Maksimilian was there, his hands raised to the sky. He was the one who cast the spell that saved them.

“I’m a little rusty,” Maks admitted, “but I still got it.” Then he let out a burp.

“Gross,” said Reese.

“The train!” said Parker. The train was moving, with the Path members and Fon-Rahm’s lamp on board. Parker snatched Professor Ellison’s bag off the ground and took off
after it.

“Parker? Where are you going?” said Theo.

Parker was on the move. He thought he might be able to catch the train, but it was picking up speed and moving away from him fast. Parker slung the bag over his shoulder as he ran. He reached
for the railing on the back of the train. He missed. He reached again and this time got hold of the railing by his fingertips. He tripped and was dragged along for a moment, but he managed to find
his footing and, finally, pull himself on board the train. He tried the door that led into the train’s last car. In his first burst of good luck all day, Parker found that it was
unlocked.

THE TRAIN WAS OLD AND NOISY,
and it pitched from side to side as it sped down the tracks. Parker found himself in a freight car loaded with boxes
and equipment piled high and strapped in place. He grabbed what he could to steady himself, and made his way carefully and quietly deeper into the train.

When he heard voices, Parker stopped and ducked behind a stack of crates. He peeked out. Two Path members were sitting on some gear, eating sandwiches and drinking coffee out of paper cups. One
of the men had his hand on the glowing metal lamp.

Parker hunted through Professor Ellison’s bag. He came up with a jeweled snowflake, which he thought didn’t really fit the occasion, and a small porcelain ballerina doll, which he
rejected as too girly. Then he found an amulet made of a piece of clear amber attached to a soft golden chain. He held the jewel up to the light. Inside the amber was a tiny, fossilized spider,
trapped since prehistoric times in tree sap that later hardened into a gemstone. Parker felt a power flowing through the talisman. He knew instinctively that he didn’t need any fancy spell to
make the thing work. He just needed to point it and believe.

Parker aimed the amulet at the Path members. He felt the thing start to heat up. Before it could do whatever it was going to do, however, the train hit a stretch of uneven track. The car bumped
and bounced, and the jewel went flying out of Parker’s hand. It landed in the middle of the car, right where anybody could see it. Anybody, like, say, the thugs armed with machine guns seven
feet away.

Parker froze, but the minions kept on eating. They didn’t see it. One of them wadded up his coffee cup and threw it to the side. Then he got up and made his way to the front of the car. He
slid open the car’s huge side door, unzipped his pants, and started to, as Parker’s dad would have said, make some yellow snow.

This was Parker’s best shot. He grabbed the dagger from his waistband and cut the straps holding the pile of crates in place. Then he scratched the crates with the knife, making an
unpleasant sound. The man with the lamp didn’t hear it. Parker did it again, louder this time. The Path member grabbed his gun and got up to investigate. Parker waited for him to get close,
and then he shoved. The crates fell on top of the minion, knocking him silly.

Parker was pleased with himself. All he had to do now was grab the lamp and set Fon-Rahm free. The second he reached for it, though, the other Path member came storming back, his gun at the
ready. Parker had overestimated the amount of coffee the guy drank and how long it would take him to pee.

Parker pulled back his hand and threw himself behind a huge crate just as the goon started blasting with his machine gun. The box was marked in Russian and had a series of holes near the top. It
smelled bad, too, but Parker didn’t have time to complain. Bullets ripped through the car and knocked the lock off the big crate.

The lamp was just sitting there, right in the open. It was Parker’s only chance. He waited for the Path member’s ammo to run out. Then, when the minion stopped to reload, Parker
jumped out and made a desperate grab at the lamp.

He came up about a foot short. The lamp was out of Parker’s reach when the thug clicked the new magazine into place. Parker looked up to meet his doom, but a noise from the crate behind
Parker startled him and the Path member. It was a growl, or maybe a roar. The gunman lowered his weapon and leaned forward, peering quizzically at the crate. Then the crate burst open and a polar
bear meant for a circus in Poland, and upset at being woken from a deep sleep, leaped at the Path member. The goon screamed and tried to fight the bear off, but it was no use.

When the bear was through with the Path member, it turned to Parker. It didn’t know what the metal container in Parker’s hands was, and it didn’t care. It had faced weapons
before. Parker twisted the thing, and the bear found himself thrown back by a sudden explosion of smoke and lightning that cut the train car in half.

When the fog cleared, Fon-Rahm and Parker found themselves in the wreckage of what was once a train car. They were stopped on the tracks while the rest of the train chugged on, towing the other
half of the freight car in a trail of sparks. The polar bear had had enough of people and lightning and trains. It was out of the car and running from the tracks on its way to a new life.

Parker scooped the amber amulet off the floor. You never know when something like that might come in handy.

“I missed you, buddy,” he told Fon-Rahm.

“Yes,” said the genie. “I suppose I missed you, too.”

“THEY HAD ME OVER A BARREL,”
Maksimilian said. He was, along with Reese, Theo, and Parker, trying to keep up with Fon-Rahm as the
genie rushed through the train yard, ripping open steel shipping containers. “The truth is, I got soft. Pip-squeaks like the Path never would have gotten to me a century ago.”

Parker took off the professor’s bag and handed it to Reese. “Will you do me a favor and carry this purse?”

“Why?”

“It’s a
purse,
” he said.

“Who’s going to see you?” Reese asked.

“Nobody. Just, please?”

Reese rolled her eyes and took the bag. Boys.

“When this one,” said Maks, pointing to Theo, “came to me for help, I just couldn’t say no. It was a chance to wipe the slate clean and stick it to Nadir. He’s a
hard man to like. Plus, I couldn’t very well pass up the chance to actually see one of the Jinn in action. Legendary.”

Maksimilian stopped, winded. “That’s enough for me. I believe there is a gallon of vodka with my name on it.” He offered his hand to Fon-Rahm. The genie stopped tearing through
the metal containers long enough to take it. “I can sense there is something big happening, but I’m in no shape to help. All I can do is wish you luck.”

“I’ll see you later, Maks,” said Theo.

Maks winked at him. “Give my love to Julia. I’m sure she’ll forgive me in a thousand years or so!”

Maksimilian walked away, his laughter echoing through the train yard. Fon-Rahm went back to his search.

“Maks is right. Something big is happening. An impending doom descends upon us, and Xaru is one step ahead. There will be a reckoning.”

“Where?” Parker asked.

“Your home.”

Reese said, “But our families, all our friends...”

“They are all in great danger.”

“We have to get back,” said Theo.

“How?” said Parker. “The jet’s totaled and we’re halfway around the world.”

Finally, Fon-Rahm found what he was looking for. He tore the doors off a shipping container and stepped inside. When he came out, he unfurled an ornate carpet on the ground. Fon-Rahm looked at
the kids and then back to the carpet.

“Not big enough,” he said.

He went back to the container and unrolled a massive sheet of linoleum.

“You’re kidding, right?” asked Reese.

“We have no time to lose. Climb on and sit down.”

The kids stepped onto the center of the linoleum and sat. Fon-Rahm stepped to the front edge. Smoke misted from his eyes.

“You may want to hold on,” he said as the linoleum rose into the air.

REESE’S MOTHER HAD READ HER
stories from
One Thousand and One Arabian Nights
when she was a small girl. Reese had found the book too
scary, but she did like one thing: the flying carpet of Prince Houssain. When she was tucked in bed, Reese had imagined herself flying on her own magic carpet. She would go to London to see Mary
Poppins and drop by New York City to visit Eloise. She would fly across the ocean, the wind blowing through her hair. She would smile and wave at the people below, so far away they looked like
ants.

Now that she was actually on a magic carpet (or a magic piece of linoleum; really, it was pretty close), she had a completely different reaction. She was terrified.

“I’m going to fall off!” she screamed as the linoleum ripped through the air.

“You will not fall off,” said Fon-Rahm.

“How do you know?”

“Because I have made it so.”

Reese trusted the genie. She locked her fingers on to the edge of the linoleum and carefully, carefully looked over the side. They were flying over the ocean at unimaginable speed, yet the wind
was no worse than as if she were home riding her electric bike. They were so low that they were skimming the water, the linoleum tearing a white wake through the waves. Dolphins were chasing
alongside. A whale breached not a hundred feet away.

All of Reese’s fear was gone. She was mesmerized by actual, real-life, swear-to-God magic.

“When I was a kid I dreamed of flying,” she said, “but this is better than anything I ever imagined.”

“I think, you know, I might be sick,” Theo said. He was still in the middle of the linoleum, trying his hardest not to yak.

Reese said, “Over the side, please.”

Fon-Rahm strode to the front of the makeshift craft, where Parker was staring out toward the future.

“What if we don’t get there in time?” Parker asked.

“Better to think of more pleasant things,” said Fon-Rahm.

Parker turned to look at his two friends. He had come so far since his days in Los Angeles, and so much had happened. Maybe the most amazing development of all was his new friendships with Theo
and Reese.

“Reese and Theo truly care about you.” Fon-Rahm spoke as if he could read Parker’s thoughts. “I know that it is hard for you to give your trust to anyone, but your new
friends have earned it. Perhaps it is time for you to let them in.”

“Theo gave up the lamps,” Parker said.

“He made a mistake.”

“What if he makes another one?”

“He will. As will Reese. As will you.”

“But not you.”

Fon-Rahm thought for a moment. “I was not sure that you would return for me or that you possessed the courage and the skill necessary to free me again. I underestimated you, and that was a
mistake.”

“Fon-Rahm, was that a compliment?” Parker looked surprised.

The genie allowed himself a grin. “Let us call it an observation.”

“I’ve been thinking,” said Parker, “about what’s going to happen when we get home. There’s going to be a fight.”

“There is going to be a war.”

“Then we should use every weapon we have.”

“You have something in mind?”

“A little strategy and some insurance,” said Parker.

The genie nodded. “We can discuss it on the way.” He aimed the linoleum at the sky, and in seconds they were tens of thousands of feet above the sea, so high they could see the curve
of the earth.

Fon-Rahm called out to Reese and Theo. “We’ll be there in an hour or so. You will need your full strength. You should try to get some rest.”

Reese stayed glued to the side, where she watched a 747 fly by underneath them. “That doesn’t seem likely,” she sighed.

PROFESSOR ELLISON HAD KNOWN PAIN.

She had almost drowned once, when her boat was sunk by pirates off the coast of ancient Egypt. She took a Spartan arrow to the shoulder in the Peloponnesian War. She twisted her ankle fleeing
from Rome when the emperor Nero set the city on fire, she was tortured on the rack for weeks when she found herself on the wrong side of the Spanish Inquisition, and her hair was singed to a crisp
when she was tied to a stake during a particularly nasty witch hunt in Scotland. An artillery shell shattered her leg near Verdun in World War I.

But the worst pain was the hunger she had felt when she was still a girl named Tarinn, poor and begging on the streets. She had gone days without food, and the pain in her empty stomach had been
enough to double her over. A slumlord took “pity” on her and made her his property in exchange for a bowl of rice. She cleaned, she cooked, and she slaved. She accepted her regular
beatings as part of the price she paid to keep the pain of starving at bay.

It was at the tables of the wealthy, serving food that she herself was forbidden to touch, that she first heard the stories of the dark sorcerer who bent the laws of nature to his own will. A
man who could do magic, real magic! A man who never went hungry, who never had to bow to anyone! A man who had conquered pain!

Then she found Vesiroth, and for years, the pain went away. He didn’t listen to her, but he didn’t thrash her as long as she stayed out of the way, and eventually, grudgingly, he
became her teacher.

She learned small things at first. How to read, how to pronounce the arcane language in the texts, how to cast a spell, how one spell combined with another. It was there that her thirst for
knowledge of the Nexus became unquenchable. She was enthralled at the feet of her mentor. She learned how to sway emotions. She learned the secret to living for thousands of years.

She also learned a healthy distrust for the power that attracted her to Vesiroth in the first place. She was not surprised to find herself enchanted by him. He was a sorcerer, after all, and the
passion that poured from the wizard with every breath was mesmerizing to his young apprentice. He was magnetic, and Tarinn could at times barely force herself to look away. But as she studied the
books and legends, she found story after story of wizards who had destroyed themselves in the never-ending quest for power, and story after story of good intentions twisted by the accumulation of
might. Power brought ego, and ego brought more ego, and she saw that it was all too easy for someone with a noble goal to become the very thing they hated most. A human being was just a human
being, and human beings were creatures of fragile minds and hurt feelings. They lashed out when they felt threatened, and the more power they had, in Tarinn’s experience, the more they felt
attacked. People with power saw enemies everywhere.