The Magnificent 12 (4 page)

This, however, was different.

He was tall. His hair was lustrous black. His armor glittered silver and gold in the sunlight. He had almost all of his teeth and he did not smell like a goat, which was pretty rare in Babylon. The concept of hotness had not yet been invented, but if it had been, Risky would have said he was hot.

Risky stopped in the middle of the street and stared. She did not know how to play it cool. Like hotness, cool had also not yet been invented, so people just pretty much acted however they felt and expressed their emotions openly.

These were very primitive times.

“Why are you staring at me?” the young man asked.

“Because your hands are as gold rings set with beryl,” Risky said. “Your belly is as bright ivory overlaid with sapphires. Your legs are as pillars of marble set upon sockets of fine gold. Your countenance is as Lebanon, excellent as the cedars, and your mouth is most suh-weet.”

Somehow the sight of this boy was making Risky go weak in the knees but strong in the similes. She knew she was babbling. She knew it was crazy, but it was how she felt. She felt smitten. She felt gobsmacked. She felt . . . love.

“I like your hair,” the boy said. “You have the hair of a goddess.”

“I am a goddess,” Risky pointed out. “See?” To demonstrate, she transformed into a huge beast made up of the useful parts of a lion, a bear, a ram, and a bull. But she kept the hair through the whole thing.

The boy turned and ran, but Risky bounded on her powerful kangaroo legs (yeah, kangaroo, too) and smacked him down on his back. She landed atop him and once again became her usual amazingly attractive self.

“What's your name, human boy?”

“G-G-G-G-Gil.”

“G-G-G-G-Gil?”

He swallowed hard and said, “Gil. Gil Gamesh.”

“Epic,” she said approvingly. She jumped up effortlessly and pulled him to his feet. “I need to build a temple for the Pale Queen.”

“The Pale Queen?” Gil echoed. He frowned. “But isn't she evil?”

“Oh, she's evil all right,” Risky said with airy dismissal.

“I heard she demanded a human sacrifice of a thousand Amalekites.”

Risky spread her hands and smiled. “They were out of goats.”

“Will she demand human sacrifices here in Babylon?”

“That depends. How fast do you think we can get a temple built?”

Oh, the days that followed were magical for Risky. She and Gil chose an architect for the temple. Then they picked out draperies and looked at paint samples and interviewed potential priests. There were so many details: whether to have pews or just make everyone stand, whether they would have music—possibly bleating horns—which knives to use to cut the throats of sacrifices, whether the blood would be caught in copper bowls or silver bowls. (Both were hard to keep polished, but this “bronze” everyone was talking about struck them both as too newfangled.)

Gil took one job for himself, keeping it coyly secret from Risky: finding a sculptor for the great statue of the Pale Queen that would dominate the altar.

The more they worked together, the more they liked each other. They held hands. They gazed into each other's eyes. Gil even wrote her poetry.

 

Your neck is like a gazelle's,

You're good at magic and spells,

Your skin is fair,

I like your hair,

When I look at you my heart swells.

 

No one said it was great poetry. Gil was just starting out as a writer and poet. He was actually much better at sword fighting than writing. But he was also very organized and had a way of getting things done that sometimes surprised Risky. When it was time to form the bricks for the temple's foundation, Risky suggested sending a conquering army to enslave the Canaanites and use their blood to mix with the mortar.

Gil came up with a totally different approach: he simply hired some professional bricklayers and used water to mix with the mortar.

“You're so efficient,” Risky gushed.

The girl was smitten.

And so was Gil.

Their love burned hot for a while. But that which burns hottest often burns out quickest. Like a match that flares in the darkness only to be extinguished by the smallest breeze.

And when love dies . . .

Five

M
ack and Stefan had been shrunk back to normal size again by the time Xiao returned to report that Valin had likewise shrunk upon reaching Amritsar.

“Did you see where he went? Would you be able to find it again?” Mack asked her as she shifted back to human shape.

“Easily. He and Paddy went into the Golden Temple.”

“The what now?”

At this point they were outside the airport, completely surrounded by khaki-uniformed men wearing khaki turbans and carrying nightsticks. These were Amritsar police. There was also a swiftly growing number of men in camouflage uniforms, some in turbans, some in berets, all armed with rifles. These were Indian military.

Beyond the ring of threatening police and military forces were regular folks with cell phones taking pictures. And somehow paparazzi were there clicking away from behind superlong lenses.

None of this worried Mack very much. First of all, he was done worrying about YouTube. It was just a given that they would be starring in yet another viral video.

And the armed men weren't a great concern because, frankly, at this point the Magnificent Seven had more than enough Vargran to deal with mere humans. Indeed, Sylvie, Jarrah, and Charlie had combined to freeze the armed men in place, which was why Mack was not handcuffed and on his way to jail.

This meant that all the beards on all those armed men were also frozen in place. This definitely made them less terrifying. After all, a beard at rest will stay at rest, while a beard in motion may run right into you at some point.
21

Dietmar had his phone out and was googling the “Golden Temple.” Actually he pronounced it “golten,” with a
t
. It irritated Mack, as most things about Dietmar did.

“It is a temple belonging to the Sikh religion,” Dietmar reported.

“Oy, don't be calling someone's religion sick,” Charlie said.

“
Sikh
not
sick
,” Dietmar explained.

“You're doing it again?” Charlie demanded.

Xiao put a calming hand on his arm. Charlie needed a calming hand because he had been pretty shaken up seeing Xiao first turn into a dragon and then turn back into a girl. There was a lot of weirdness to being part of the Magnificent Twelve. He was one of the newer members and he'd already had to get used to a lot.

“Sikh. S-I-K-H,” Xiao spelled it out.

“Yeah,” Jarrah said, like she'd known it all along. (She hadn't.)

“In fact, most of these fellows around us with the beards are Sikhs,” Dietmar pointed out.

“Yes, this is true.” This from Singh, whose reappearance made them all jump. Mack was adjusted to the fact that all the closest beards were spell-frozen. Singh had been out of range and he now threaded his way carefully through the rows of poised and motionless soldiers and police.

“No closer!” Mack cried, and covered his eyes. “No offense. I have a phobia about beards.”

“So you came to the Punjab?” Singh asked skeptically. “If you have a phobia of sharks, do you go swimming in the ocean?”

“Please don't say
shark
!” Mack begged.

“What's this Golden Temple, then?” Jarrah asked, trying to move past the awkwardness.

“It is a place very sacred to our religion,” Singh said.

“Then how come they let Valin in?” Mack demanded through his fingers. “I mean, even if he's a Sikh, I don't think Nine Iron is.”

Singh shrugged. (Not that Mack could see this.) And he said, “All faiths, all races, all sexes, everyone is welcome. Plus: free lunch.”

“I'd kill for a burger,” Stefan said at the mention of lunch.

Singh shook his head. (Again, this was lost on Mack.) “No, sir, we are vegetarian.” Then, seeing the blank look on Stefan's face, he expanded. “We do not eat flesh. The meal would perhaps be lentils.”

“I'd kill for a lentil,” Stefan said.

“Is there anything you wouldn't kill for?” Rodrigo asked. Like Charlie, he was still somewhat new to the Magnificent Twelve.

“Brussels sprouts,” Stefan said without hesitation, and the pure, distilled hatred in his voice convinced Mack that no matter where else they went, they should never go to Belgium.
22

“Could Valin stay in the temple?” Mack asked.

“Not for long,” Singh said. “It's a very busy place.”

“Okay then,” Mack said forcefully, or as forcefully as he could under the circumstances. “We go after Valin. Then: San Francisco.”

“Why San Francisco?” Sylvie asked.

Mack shrugged. “Grimluk said something about an orange bridge, then he said it was more of a rust red. And he mentioned a golden gate. That would have to be the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.”

“So first the Golden Temple, and then the Golden Gate,” Sylvie said. “If only we could be sure that our futures were so golden.”

Sylvie didn't know it yet, but she was right to harbor such doubts. She was in a quandary, Sylvie was. Valin was her half brother. And Mack, well, she had come to care about Mack. Of course Mack was blithely unaware that she had a
tendre
23
for him, or that however much she despised what Valin was doing, she still had to hope he would not be hurt.

“Will any of us survive?” Sylvie asked herself quietly. “Will loyalty or love mean anything in the end? Is it true, as Sartre said, that life begins on the other side of despair?”

Yep, she was philosophical, Sylvie was. She watched Mack slithering away atop Xiao's rippling turquoise back and felt momentarily abandoned. Jarrah was feeling much the same, gazing after Stefan.

The two girls' hands touched, and they offered each other a silent, reassuring squeeze.

Riding off with the wind in his face and Stefan's knees in his back, Mack heard his phone ring. He didn't answer it for fear he would drop it, and how was he going to replace a phone in the middle of all this?

He made a mental note to check for messages as soon as he landed, but he forgot, and so he did not receive Camaro's worried voice mail.

Thus was Richard Gere Middle School
24
doomed.

Six

MEANWHILE, 7,831 MILES AWAY, IN SEDONA, ARIZONA

“H
e's not answering,” Camaro said, staring at the phone like she might smash it.

The golem was continuing to dance, but he was dancing on the floor, which was a good thing. “Maybe Mack's dancing.”

(Mack was not dancing, as you know perfectly well. He was riding a dragon toward the Golden Temple of Amritsar.)

Camaro's eyes narrowed suspiciously. “There's something very wrong here tonight. The question is: What do we do about it?”

“Leave a message?” the golem suggested, which was a pretty sensible suggestion. It surprised Camaro: the golem was not always
25
sensible.

“Mack, it's Camaro. Something very weird is going on here. There's a bunch of creepy short dudes and a bunch of locust-looking people, too. Call me.”

She hung up the call, gave the phone back to the golem, and thought. Camaro might be a bit of a thug but she was not stupid. In fact she had good grades and had a particular knack for math and science. She could think when she needed to.

And she could observe, too. At this particular moment she was observing the fact that all the stocky little dudes and the buggy creatures were watching the golem.

So. They were there for the golem. This was about him, and, Camaro intuited, about that red-haired girl the golem had told her about. She was the one who'd almost caused the golem to kill Camaro.

Uncool.

Camaro searched the room for the redhead, but she wasn't there. She wasn't the kind of girl you easily overlooked.

“So these are just minions,” Camaro muttered, and nodded knowingly. Minions were like underbullies. There might be a lot of them, but if old James Bond movies, Bruce Willis movies, and Star Wars movies had taught her anything, it was that minions are easily disposed of.

She sidled up to Tony Pooch, who flinched at her approach. “Bully emergency. Keep it quiet. Spread the word.”

She did the same with Ed Lafrontiere, the disgraced
Twilight
fans' bully, who was now hoping for a new assignment. And Matthew Morgan, who dealt with nerds and dorks.

Within seconds the word had gone out to all twelve official bullies—and Disgraced Ed. They gathered around Camaro and the golem.

“Listen up,” Camaro said. “I am declaring this an official bully emergency. You are all bound by the oath you took to work together whenever there's a threat to our thing.”

“Is it this guy? Mack?” the skater/punk bully demanded, jerking a thumb at the golem, who was at that moment pulling a small twig out of his nose.

“No, the gol— I mean, Mack, is cool. He's on our side. In fact, he's the one in danger.”

“In danger?” Popular Mean Girls bully Jennifer Schwarz asked. “Why should we care?”

Camaro thumped her on the head for that and explained, “You want someone else bullying our kids? Some outsiders who aren't even part of our thing? Think before you say something stupid.”

“No way,” Ed said, anxious for any chance to prove himself. “No way some outside bullies bully our victims.”

“We call them clients, not victims,” Camaro corrected him patiently. “Now, listen up. You see those short, stocky dudes with the long skinny fingers and the sharp teeth trying to pass themselves off as kids?”

The bullies all looked.

“Now, do you see the skinny ones with kind of buggy heads dressed in raincoats and evening dresses?”

Most of them didn't know what an evening dress was—and no surprise; it's a totally inappropriate clothing choice for a chaperone—but they were able to spot the suspicious ones nevertheless.

“There are too many for us to take them on all at once. We need to peel them off, a few at a time,” Camaro said. She tilted her head and looked at the golem. Then back at the treasonous Tong Elves and the Skirrit. No, she didn't know that was what they were, but she looked at them anyway and saw again that they were totally fixated on the golem.

“We use the gol—er, Mack—as bait,” Camaro said. She beckoned the golem and whispered in his ear. “I want you to walk toward the boys' room. Then, at the last minute, just as you reach the bathroom, you'll be close to the outside door, right?”

The golem had no idea if this was right. So he said, “Right.”

“When you get there, do something to attract attention. Then run outside real quick!”

Camaro did not specify exactly what the golem should do to attract attention, and this would prove to be a mistake. Because the golem followed her instructions perfectly. He walked toward the boys' room. And there, just before he would have to go in, he attracted attention by sticking his tongue out.

Fourteen feet.

Golem bodies are capable of amazing things, what with basically being mud thinly disguised to look like skin and hair and clothing and so on.

So the golem didn't really have a tongue like normal people; he had as much tongue as he wanted to have. In fact he could turn much of his body into tongue, and that's what he did: first he stuck out his tongue, and then with both hands he pulled more and more tongue out until it was sort of like a limp fire hose just piling up in a coil on the floor as his body got smaller and smaller and—

And then there was a bunch of screaming as kids noticed. Some of that screaming came from Jennifer Schwarz, but pretty soon everyone—regardless of gender, race, creed, or national origin—was screaming.

It certainly did attract the attention of the Tong Elves and the Skirrit.

The golem bolted for the exit. But he was unable to move quickly due to the fact that he was dragging fourteen feet of tongue using legs now no bigger than turkey drumsticks.

“Oooookay,” Camaro said, somewhat discouraged. “Let's get 'em!”

She charged at the Tong Elves, who were charging at the golem, who was dragging his tongue out into the common area outside the all-purpose room. Most of her bullies followed her, but none was exactly leading the charge.

So Camaro plowed into the back of a Tong Elf. It was like hitting a statue. Tong Elves are tough. Camaro couldn't know this—indeed, few people do—but Tong Elves are raised from the age of three in deep underground caves
26
where they are required to carve their own living space out of solid bedrock using nothing but a lighter and a hatchet. Their only drink is the condensation on cave walls, and they scrape the lichen from rocks with their specially adapted lower teeth. The lederhosen they wear are the tanned pelts of bears that they kill and skin in unarmed combat.

So, they're tough, the Tong Elves. Even the treasonous ones.

Camaro literally bounced off the Tong Elf she'd hit. But she landed well and rolled back to her feet.

The Tong Elf turned wicked eyes on her and reached for the trident dagger that was the specialized weapon of his tong (Live Oak Tong). The weapon had three blades, the center one longer than the other two and serpentine in style.

“You filthy bag of seething worms!” the Tong Elf snarled.

“Who are you calling a . . . whatever you said?” Camaro demanded.

The Tong Elf slashed at Camaro and she dodged out of the way, but it was a close call. One of the smaller blades shaved a strand of dark hair from her head.

“Whoa!” Camaro cried.

“I'll carve you like a Thanksgiving turkey, you vile, hideous, pestilential primate!”

Camaro had been a bully since second grade, but no one had ever almost killed her. This was a new experience and she didn't like it. Her eyes darted to the wall, to the red steel-and-glass box that held the fire extinguisher. She leaped, grabbed it, and swung the heavy cylinder blindly just as the Tong Elf stabbed his three-way blade at her.

The steel cylinder caught the blades and broke one.

She raised the fire extinguisher and slammed it hard at the Tong Elf's wrinkled-up apple-doll face.

Wham!

The Tong Elf recoiled, staggered back, and Camaro was on him in a flash. She hit the Tong Elf a second, powerful blow and—

Suddenly she fell to her knees.

She dropped the fire extinguisher.

She stared down at the long, glittering steel shaft that extended out of her chest. It was smeared with blood.

Feeling stupid, she turned to see the Skirrit standing behind her, its insect claw wrapped tightly around the short spear.

The golem tried to cry out in fear, seeing Camaro fall, but his tongue first had to be raveled back into his mouth, and his body first had to reassume some kind of normal proportions, and only then could he cry, “Camaro!”

The golem ran to her and knelt beside her as the Skirrit, showing no emotion on its dead-eyed face, pulled the spear from her body.

“Golem . . . ,” Camaro gasped.

“Camaro!” the golem cried.

Fighting, which had broken out between the foul creatures and the bullies, ended abruptly. It ended with half the bullies unconscious and the rest running for home and trying to come up with stories to explain why they had run in terror from their first real fight.

“Golem,” Camaro said, wheezing through her pain, “they're going to try and make you do things . . . bad things. You can't let them.”

“But . . . but I am just a golem,” he said. “I can only be what I'm made to be.”

“No, Golem,” Camaro said. She grasped his arm and pulled him down to her.

The golem saw her eyes flutter and she sagged back. He howled in pain and sadness, and he twisted one of his fingers off his hand and pushed the claylike mud into her terrible wound.

“You'll be okay,” he said through tears that cut small channels in his cheeks. “You have to be okay!”

“Oh, isn't this sweet?”

The golem had heard the voice before. A girl's voice, though in truth the “girl” was millennia old.

He lay Camaro's head gently on the ground, and turned to face what he knew would be his own doom.

She was stunning, of course, her red hair blowing in a slight breeze, her lips redder still, her skin the color of cream, her eyes like green fire.

Risky.

“Come here, little golem,” Risky said, and crooked her finger and smiled her crafty, evil smile. “We tried this once before and your little friend here got in the way. This time it doesn't look like she'll be much trouble.”

The golem felt something then. He felt something he had never really felt before. It was like there was a fire burning inside him. It wasn't a feeling borrowed from Mack; it came from someplace else.

He leaped to his feet. His face twisted into a terrible mask of anger. And he stretched his hands out to wring Risky's neck.

“Oh, how cute,” Risky said. “It has a temper.”

The golem wrapped its fingers around her throat and drew her close. And that was when Risky's hand shot out like a piston and her fist rammed right into the golem's mouth.

In seconds the golem began to feel . . . strange.

Different.

He was no longer choking the evil goddess. His hands fell away from her neck and hung by his sides.

From the distance came the sound of an ambulance siren.

But here on the quad, on the grass in front of the multipurpose room, every eye—human and not human—was watching the golem.

Watching as the creature most had thought was Mack, and some knew was only a version of Mack, changed.

His skin grew gray and hard. It was as if a suit of armor was growing over him.

At the same time he was getting taller and broader, with bunches of muscles like pythons, with fingers that ended in bird-of-prey talons.

His face was the last to change. He'd looked like Mack, of course, albeit a somewhat sloppy, slightly muddy, occasionally twig-poking version of Mack.

But now his cheeks became hard slabs of steel. His mouth was a slit lined with red-rimmed steel teeth. Two horns grew from his temples—twisted, bony horns that arced forward and came to sharp points just to the side of his eyes.

“Much better,” Risky purred. “Now, my little Destroyer, follow me.”

She turned, laughed in delight, and walked away as the lumbering monster who had sort of been Mack followed behind her like a sullen and dangerous dog.