Seven Wonders Book 1: The Colossus Rises (21 page)

M
ARCO TOOK THE
steps two at a time. Aly and I were close behind him as he reached the first ledge. He snatched robes from the clothesline outside the domed building. “Put these on. Quick! Don’t want to arouse suspicion.”

“I don’t think they care about that right now!” Aly said.

As we ran, we slipped the robes on over our packs and raced to the second set of steps. Descending to the middle ledge, I heard the griffin screech again.

We ran across the yard, past the greenhouse. Close up, it didn’t seem right. I’d never seen a greenhouse with thick, brownish glass. And no evidence of plants inside.

Monks were climbing up from below now, clawing past one another, their faces panicked. Hoods were falling
off left and right, and I could see that
all
of them had the lambda on the backs of their heads.

We rushed to the white fence and looked over the side.

My stomach lurched. The griffin was perched at the bottom level, its lion legs coiled. Beyond it, the cliff dropped off to the sea.

With a thrust of its wings, the beast surged toward the stairs and closed its talons on the shoulders of a black-haired monk. He screamed, his arms and legs flailing, as the griffin lifted him into the air.

We watched in horror as it flew northward along the cliffs. For the first time, I noticed that the cliff face was pocked with holes as far as the eye could see. The griffin with its prey flew directly toward one of them and disappeared inside. Aly gasped and turned away.

“I guess that’s its dining room,” Marco said.

Aly’s eyes were like saucers. I knew what she was thinking.

Cass might be in one of those caves, too.

Marco spun around, running directly into the swarm of fleeing monks. “Did you see our friend?” he asked the crowd. “A kid! Thirteen years old! Does anybody speak English here? Did you see where that thing took our friend?”

“Careful, Marco!” I shouted.

“Don’t worry, I’m immortal, remember?” Most of the monks were bouncing off Marco, not paying his words any attention. “Doesn’t somebody speak English here?”

Aly grabbed my arm and began pulling me through the crowd, toward the greenhouse. “Jack, look at this,” she said. “Look what’s in there.”

As we approached the glass-walled building, I could see enormous piles of stone rubble inside. They rose into jagged peaks high overhead.

“Look closely at those stones,” she said. “They’re
sculpted
. Pieces of statues. Like these guys have been scouring the world for every ruined relic they could get their hands on.”

She was right. Each piece had a carved side, as if it had been broken off a larger statue. There were piles of arms, legs, feet, heads…

A hand
.

Aly and I both saw it at the same moment—the unmistakable shape of a giant broken hand, reaching upward as if it was supposed to be holding something. Like a torch.

“Jack, what if this is the—” Before Aly could finish, two fleeing monks barreled into her. She spun and fell, her head hitting the dirt, and the men landed smack on top of her.

The three of them scuffled. I grabbed on to one of the monks, who must have weighed two hundred pounds. He had stringy, shoulder-length hair, and his eyes were circles of panic. He yanked me downward, yelling in Greek. We fell to the ground, rolling to a stop near Aly. He grabbed me by the neck and started to squeeze. Hard. I gasped for air. My eyesight started to fade.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Aly knee the other monk in the groin. As he howled and curled up, she sprang to her feet, racing around behind my attacker. “Get your hands off him!”

She yanked the monk backward by the hair. He screamed and loosened his grip. Scrambling away, I swung my legs around to clip his ankle.

He fell with a thud as his head hit the hard-packed dirt. He was out for the count.

It took a moment for me to regain my breath. I stood carefully, still wary of the monk stampede. From their midst, Marco emerged, running toward us.

“Are you okay, Aly?” he asked.

She stood, staring down at her own palm. Her mouth hung open in shock. “Guys, look,” she said, turning her hand toward us.

Her palm was streaked with white, like she’d grabbed on to a freshly painted picket fence. “It’s from him,” she said. Her eyes traveled to the ground, to where my attacker now lay unconscious on his stomach.

The white lambda on the back of his head was smudged.

It had been painted on.

“These guys are fakes,” she said. “They’re not really Selects.”

Marco nodded. “Shoulda known. They’re not cool enough.”

A massive shadow swept over us. I glanced up to see the griffin soaring overhead.

A rifle crack rang out, and the tip of the griffin’s wing shattered into a spray of feathers. As I spun to look, a man in a black, embroidered robe was descending the stairs. At the top, ranged along the lip of the first ledge, three other monks knelt, their rifles pointing outward.

“
Stop that!
” Marco cried out, running across the plateau toward the stairs.

Aly and I followed. The man barked an order to his henchman. Then he turned to Marco and asked something in Greek.

“Do you speak English?” Marco said. “That thing has one of my friends. We think it took him into a cave. If you shoot it, we’ll never find him!”

“English?” The man narrowed his eyes. He had a deep voice, his Greek accent inflected with British. “I am Brother Dimitrios. Who are you?”

“Brother Marco,” Marco shot back.

The man cocked his head curiously. “From the New York or the Los Angeles Massarene?”

I shot Aly a look.
Massarene?

Marco blinked. “Uh—the Akron, Ohio?” he said.

Brother Dimitrios eyed us warily. Then one of the henchmen began yelling, pointing south along the cliff wall. The griffin’s wound had been only a graze, and it was
coming back for another pass.

The men aimed their rifles. But the griffin never came in range. It soared below us and disappeared into another of the cliffside caves.

“By the Great Qalani,” Brother Dimitrios said under his breath. “How many prisoners has it taken?”

I shot Aly a glance. She’d heard him say it, too.

Brother Dimitrios began shouting instructions in Greek to his henchmen. Two of them ran toward the cliff, disappearing through the door leading inside. The other man came down the steps, urging all the monks to follow him.

“What are they saying, Brother Dimitrios?” I demanded.

He ignored me, his eyes focused on something over my shoulder. I turned to see the griffin rising into the air once more.

This time, it flew straight toward us.

W
E WERE TOAST
.
Aly, Marco, and I dove for the ground. We hit the dirt where the greenhouselike building met the cliff wall.

But the griffin passed right over us. It flew at the side of the cliff, digging its talons into the wall above our heads. A clod of dirt and rock shook loose.

Letting out a ferocious cry, it sprang away and attacked the wall a second time.

“It’s trying to get inside!” I shouted. “It wants something in there.”

“Something that starts with
L
and ends in
oculus
,” Marco said.

The cliff wall shook again. We had to roll away to avoid
being crushed by an avalanche of rocks and dirt.

My mind was racing. Cass was unreachable. The Loculus was ungettable. For a split second I thought about Dad. About how he always said a problem was an answer waiting to be opened.

Help me, Dad
, I thought.

As the griffin attacked the wall for a third time, I heard another rifle shot from above us. One of Brother Dimitrios’s men was on his knees by an olive oil urn, pointing the rifle down at the griffin.

The griffin landed just a few yards from us, roaring angrily. The man quickly descended the steps. He planted his feet at the base of the staircase and shot a third time. We all flinched. As the bullet penetrated the griffin’s skin, the beast cocked its head at the shooter. It took two quick steps toward him and lashed out with its wing. The rifleman tried to scramble away, but he wasn’t fast enough.

He tumbled forward and disappeared over the edge. His scream made my stomach churn.

The griffin didn’t seem concerned about either the monk or its own bullet wound. It paused a moment, looking toward the caves to the north. I didn’t have to be an expert on griffin facial expressions to know that it was hungry. It had its own problem. It needed the Loculus, but it also needed to eat.

In that moment, I knew exactly what to do.

“If the Loculus is in there,” I said, “we have to help the griffin get it.”

“
What?
” Aly said at the same time.

“It’s programmed to get the Loculus,” I said. “It’s going to do that first—and I say we let it. But look. It’s starving. My bet is that once it has the Loculus it will head off for a meal.”

“Yeah, fillet of Cass!” Marco added.

“Exactly,” I said. “We just have to get to him before it does.”

“Awesome, dude!” Marco said. “We can scale the cliff!”

Aly whirled on him. “And how do you suggest we do that, Mr. Immortal? Rappel down with our shoestrings? There are dozens of caves. We’d need a week to find him!”

“I know it’s risky,” I said, “but it’s the only chance we have.”

“Uh-oh,” Marco murmured. “Heads up.”

The griffin was turning slowly, as if noticing us for the first time. It blinked, then bared a set of sharp teeth, glistening with saliva. It let out a guttural hiss that whipped up the stones from the ground.

Aly’s hand found mine and gripped it tight.

Marco’s eyes drifted upward, above the griffin’s head. He swallowed hard. “Um, Angry Bird? You can’t understand what I’m saying, but you’re some in serious trouble….”

I looked up. The two olive oil delivery guys stood at the top of the cliff, nearly a hundred feet above the griffin, balancing an enormous boulder between them.

Behind the beast, a metal door cracked open against a wall. The griffin turned its head sharply—just as the men released the boulder.

It hurtled downward, glancing against the raptor’s shoulder. Its foreleg buckled. Letting out a roar of confusion and pain, it launched itself straight upward. The olive oil men took off at a run.

As the griffin leaped, Brother Dimitrios emerged from the monastery. He began struggling up the wooden stairs toward the first level. In his arms was a huge object, covered by a gold-embroidered cloth.

Hovering in midair, the griffin turned to look.

Then it dove, shrieking, at the monk’s head. Brother Dimitrios stumbled. The object fell out of his hands and bounced downstairs with a strange, ringing sound. It rolled to a stop near the fence on the far side of the ledge.

The cloth had slid off to reveal a bronze sculpture of an enormous flame, about five feet high.

“No!” Brother Dimitrios bellowed. Wrenching free of the griffin, he threw himself down the wooden steps after the flame.

And I ran toward it, trying to get there first.

I didn’t know what a Loculus looked like. But I knew the Colossus had held a flaming torch in its hand, like the Statue of Liberty. And the griffin had been focused on Brother Dimitrios and his sculpture.

All of which meant to me that maybe the Loculus was
in
the sculpted flame.

Marco and Aly were right behind me. “Give it to the griffin, Brother Dimitrios!” I shouted. “Let him have it!”

“Over my dead body!” Brother Dimitrios replied. He shoved me aside, scooped up the flame, and began running, dodging the griffin as he rushed up the steps. Marco, Aly, and I dashed after him. But he stumbled as he started up the next set of stairs—and the griffin swooped down again.

The monk screamed as the griffin dug its talons into his shoulder. It shook him like a chew toy, slamming him against the wooden railing that ran along the side of the stairs. With a crack, the banister broke.

Brother Dimitrios’s robe tore and he tumbled down the stairs, landing at our feet with the flame still clutched firmly in his arms. The griffin perched above us and prepared to pounce.

“Hey, Rotten Breath!” Marco called out, leaping over the monk and running right for the griffin. “Ever play Whac-a-Griffin?”

He yanked off a section of the broken banister. Holding it over his head, he raced up the steps and brought the rail down hard on the griffin’s beak.

The beast let out a roar of pain. It fluttered its wings. It had endured bullets and a flying boulder. A bat to its schnozz was the last straw.

As Marco slipped past it and raced to the top of the cliff, it flew upward. They both disappeared out of sight on the top level where we’d first arrived.

Aly and I ran. We could hear Marco taunting the beast. It screeched back at him. I heard the crash of glass, the crunch of metal. “
Marco-o-o-o!
” I called out.

We emerged at the top and stopped in our tracks.

The griffin was hunched over, facing away from us, bent forward. All we could see was its massive wings and haunches. It looked like it was feeding.

There was only one thing it could be feeding on.

Marco.