The Magnificent 12 (9 page)

Sixteen

T
he Cornucopia
was a pretty big sailboat, with vast triangular sails pulling at a mast that seemed to go up a long way. Grace was pretty big herself, a seafaring sort of woman with salt-bleached blond hair and a face that had seen a few storms.

She had no crew at the moment, so Stefan had been drafted. On her orders he raced back and forth, cranking this and hauling that and tying off something else, all resulting in the boat moving pretty fast toward the Golden Gate Bridge.

The Golden Gate Bridge is like the Eiffel Tower in that both are very well-known, no surprises, but both are still very cool. It's a suspension bridge, which means that the road part basically hangs from wires. The wires hang from massive cables, which are in turn sort of draped over two very tall towers.

Some people think those wires and that cable are just there for show. They aren't. If you started cutting those wires, or worse yet, one of the two cables, the road and the cars on it would go plunging many feet down into the swift current of the Golden Gate.

Mack thought uneasily about this as the boat passed beneath the bridge. It was both big and fragile, somehow. You could imagine some giant with a giant pair of scissors cutting through those wires.

Mack was unfortunately very good at imagining terrible things. It was probably related to his many phobias. Imagination is great, but it can also torture you.

The deck of the boat was already tilted but it heeled over much farther once they passed beyond the shelter of the bay. It was pitched now almost like a roof.

“One hand for yourself and one for the boat!” Grace yelled as Charlie and Sylvie slid like out-of- control skateboarders. Then, “Stefan! Take up the slack in that line.”

It was a beautiful thing, Mack realized: a beautiful boat in a beautiful place under a beautiful blue sky dotted with scudding white clouds.

In fact it might be the most beautiful place he'd ever been. This fact just filled him with longing for home. He missed his mom and dad even if they didn't realize he was gone. He missed his boring teachers, and even more the good teachers. He missed lying around playing games online. He missed being dragged to Target to buy underwear or whatever.

None of that was ever going to happen to him again, he thought. His life was permanently messed up. Even if he somehow survived, he would always be Mack of the Magnifica.

Would he end up like Grimluk? Would he live on and on somehow? End up in some cave somewhere talking via bright chrome toilet objects to some kid in the distant future?

Sylvie came and stood beside him as he stared pensively toward the rising volcano with its plume of ash.

“What are you thinking?” Sylvie asked him.

“Me?” His first instinct was to deny that he was thinking at all. But that wouldn't do. “I'm thinking that one way or the other we're finally getting to the end.”

Sylvie nodded thoughtfully. “Life? Or death? Victory or failure?”

“Yeah, all that.”

“It is a beautiful day to die,” she said.

Mack sighed. “Kind of early though. I mean, in terms of life. Twelve years old isn't supposed to be the end.”

“Death is welcome only to those in unendurable pain,” Sylvie said.

Which sounded very profound to Mack, but not very comforting. “If I die, it means I'll never go to college. Or have a job. Or eat caviar. Not that caviar sounds all that great, but everyone should taste it before they die, right?”

Sylvie moved beside him and put her arm around his waist, which left him no real choice but to do the same to her. She felt very small. It suddenly occurred to him that she would also very likely die, and that somehow seemed outrageous to him. It made him mad.

This wasn't just about Mack MacAvoy, it was about these friends of his. And his whole family back home in Sedona. All his old friends.

Also people he kind of knew but didn't really know, like people on TV shows and in movies and pop stars and all.

And then there were the billions of people he didn't know, and didn't even “kind of” know—all those people all around the world who were just minding their own business, eating lentils and driving their kids to school and doing their jobs.

“Is there not one special thing you would miss, Mack?” Sylvie asked him.

Her head was turned toward him now, and frankly she was unusually close. Closer than she had ever been before. Closer than any girl—or boy for that matter—had ever been before.

“Um . . . ,” Mack said, and suddenly found he had a hard time swallowing properly.

“Is there not one thing you will miss above all others?” Sylvie asked, and her voice was breathy and kind of unsteady and her eyes were very big and he could actually feel the vibration of her heart beating.

He thought frantically. What did she mean? Was she talking about food? Was she talking about the next
Avengers
sequel that he might never see?

He didn't have the answer, but he had a feeling that maybe he did, or maybe he would if his brain was working right, which it obviously wasn't, so instead of saying, “Toaster Strudel?” which was one thing he would really, really miss, he said:

“Errr, uhhh . . .”

Sylvie's eyes closed. And she touched her lips to his.

They were extremely, extremely, extremely soft lips. Extremely.

And then she released him and walked away, swaggering just a bit.

Five minutes later Mack remembered to breathe.

And then he muttered, “Well, I didn't know I was going to miss that most. But now I do.”

“Land ho!” Grace yelled.

It was not the volcano; they weren't quite there yet, although the sky was darkening with ash. It was the rising ridge of gray-and-tan stone. It was a low wall beside the boat now, getting taller as the boat blew on toward the volcano.

“Here!” Mack yelled. “This will do.”

Grace ordered Stefan to drop the sails, and speed fell away. As they slowed, the choppiness of the waves became more pronounced. Mack could feel the beginnings of seasickness.

“Here, guys,” he said to the others. “Any nearer to the volcano and we'd have to climb up the side of a cliff.”

“We can use Vargran to—” Jarrah said.

But Mack shook his head. “Vargran is our only weapon. We only use the
enlightened puissance
when we absolutely need to. We'll jump.”

Well, that proved easier in theory than it was in reality. Try jumping from a heaving boat onto a wave-washed boulder. Only Jarrah and Stefan made it without a bruise or a dunking.

Mack very nearly drowned but was rescued by Stefan and propped up on what was clearly a living, growing stone road that ran from the volcano toward the city. It would be mere hours before the road stretched all the way.

Mack knew what was coming then. Or at least some of what was coming then.

There were news helicopters in the air thwack-thwacking around shooting video of the volcano but also now of the gaggle of nine kids.

There were other aircraft as well. Two Air National Guard jets roared by overhead. A military drone circled slowly. And of course Mack could guess that up in orbit satellites aimed their cameras down at the impossible sight.

“What's the plan, boss?” It was Jarrah. She had to shout to be heard over the crashing waves, the low groan of growing rock, and the eggbeater helicopters.

“The plan?” Mack wondered aloud. He considered it, painfully aware that all eyes were on him. “Gandalf on the bridge in Khazad-dûm.”

Everyone but Dietmar stared blankly. The German boy actually smiled. He had gotten the reference.

“The Pale Queen,” Mack said, “shall not pass.”

Seventeen

“H
ow do we do this?” Xiao asked. “What is our strategy?”

Mack looked around at his little group: Jarrah and Stefan both grinning in anticipation of a good fight; Xiao and Sylvie both thoughtful and concerned; Dietmar looking tougher than Dietmar tended to look. Rodrigo was ostentatiously checking his fingernails, but his hands were trembling just a little. Charlie was pale and gulping a lot, and he kept kind of jerking his head like he was talking to himself and trying to encourage himself.

Valin stood a little apart, perhaps sensing that the group still resented him over his previous efforts to murder Mack. But Mack had no doubt that Valin would stand and fight. He had no doubt about any of them, really.

“I'm proud of you guys,” Mack said. He hadn't meant to say it; it just came out.

For once Sylvie did not feel the need to wax philosophical and just said, “We are proud to be with you.”

“Okay, then,” Mack said. “We all know the problem: the
enlightened puissance
gets depleted when you use it. So we need to take turns with Vargran. We need to try and guess when it will take combined powers and when we can do things alone. And—”

At that moment he was interrupted by a vibration on the air and in the rock beneath his feet. It was not an earthquake. It was the sound of stamping feet.

Mack shaded his eyes and peered toward the volcano. Something was moving. A something made up of many smaller somethings.

An army was on the march. And it marched pretty fast.

A news helicopter swooped down to get a closer look. There was a flash of light from the moving mass, and the helicopter erupted in a ball of fire.

“No!” Sylvie cried.

From the Coast Guard cutter that had been stationed near the volcano came an amplified voice, an authoritative female voice saying, “This is the US Coast Guard. You will stop your advance and stand down immediately.”

Needless to say, the vibration of booted feet never faltered. There was no hesitation. In fact, a massive spear, bigger than any human could possibly hope to carry, let alone throw, arced through the air, flew the hundred yards to the cutter, and stabbed right through the ship's bridge.

The cutter had guns. A .50 caliber machine gun and a three-inch cannon. Both erupted.

BOOOM!

BapBapBapBapBapBap!

Cannon shells flew and exploded against an invisible barrier. The bullets bounced off and dappled the water.

The ship was coming closer to where Mack and the others stood, near enough now that they could see individual faces on the deck. Near enough that they could see medical personnel working frantically on the bridge, where the tree-trunk spear was stuck.

The firing never stopped, but suddenly, as if in response, two massive Gudridan, impossibly strong, their fur pink with fury, leaped across the hundred yards of sea and landed with a resounding thump on the ship, which suddenly seemed much smaller than it had.

One of them yanked the massive spear free, tossed it into the air, and caught it in his paw in such a way that he could stab it downward.

The other Gudridan grabbed the guardsmen at the cannon and simply threw them into the sea. He did the same with the machine gunner, who had bravely turned his weapon on the Gudridan.

The firing stopped and the two Gudridan proceeded to rip the ship apart with brute strength. A single lifeboat was launched. Guardsmen leaped into the water, but others the Gudridan caught and . . . well, there's no need to go into that, but it caused Charlie and Xiao both to look away from the horror.

The leading elements of the monstrous attack were now clearly visible. Mack saw Tong Elves, Bowands, Skirrit, Lepercons, and more Gudridan. And other creatures whose names he had never learned, terrible beasts with slavering red mouths and talons as long as ram's horns and as sharp as razors.

And that was when the air force showed up.

Two F-18s roared high above, and their missiles flew with uncanny precision, hitting the stone causeway squarely in the middle of the monstrous army. The explosions were enormous. The shock wave knocked Mack back into Stefan, and sent Sylvie rolling into Rodrigo.

But the blasts had no effect. They exploded harmlessly against the invisible protective barrier. That barrier wrapped itself around the causeway as the monsters advanced. It was impermeable, except for a brief moment when the Gudridan leaped back ashore from the now-sinking Coast Guard boat.

Mack knew there would be more ships and more planes. But none of them would stop the Pale Queen's army. In the battle of technology versus magic, technology wasn't likely to win.

“We need weapons, not just spells,” Valin said urgently.

“But what can we use against the Pale Queen's own magic?” Dietmar wondered.

“A magical weapon,” Charlie said. “Right? Like something that totally doesn't exist. Something that isn't about technology.”

“If it's something big, we'll probably all have to work together. That will leave us vulnerable for a while,” Mack said. “Okay. Who's got an idea?”

Rodrigo said, “When we were trapped for days in the sewers of Paris, Charlie would spend his time drawing amazing things. Tanks with spikes, missiles that spray sticky bombs, jets that drop sharpened steel Frisbees. . . .”

This was not something anyone (but Rodrigo) had expected of Charlie. No one had realized he was an artist. That would have explained a lot.

“Okay, look, I've got an idea,” Charlie said. “But it's crazy. And we'll need some Vargran to build it and some more to penetrate that invisible shield they've got.”

He dropped to a crouch and began to quickly draw something on a flat bit of rock.

The monster army was closer now—too close for the Magnificent Eight to be sitting around drawing the kind of stuff that got you in trouble if you did it in math class.

“Cool,” Jarrah opined. “How's it work?”

“It's basically a Gatling gun, but with spears instead of bullets. Eight spear shooters arranged in a drum. And the cool thing is that the spears are on wires so they get yanked back and refired.”

For a minute he was just an enthusiastic kid showing off his crazy invention. And for a minute they were all, like, “Wow, cool,” with a touch of “This boy's got issues” thrown in.

“I call it . . . the Spear Gun,” Charlie said. Then, when no one seemed all that impressed by the name, he shrugged and said, “I'm not good with names for things.”

Mack instantly saw that there was going to be a problem with this invention, but there wasn't time for a plan B.

“Okay,” Mack said. “We keep the spell simple: make this drawing real. Let's try it with Xiao, Sylvie, Rodrigo, and Charlie since it's his idea. The rest of us are going that way.” He pointed toward the rapidly advancing wall of terrible creatures. “We're going to see if we can poke a hole in the Pale Queen's barrier.”

Xiao said, “Take care of yourselves. We must still attempt to be the Twelve. We can afford no losses.”

Sylvie met Mack's gaze. “I can afford no loss,” she said.

Mack squared his shoulders. Stefan and Jarrah stood on his right. Valin and Dietmar were on the other side.

“Let's rock this,” Stefan said.