No, it will kill you.
This is not justice. Nor is it unjust. It just is.
CHAPTER
TWELVE
THE RUINS
Perhaps Brett senior was right, and a proximity to dragons was Randolph Price’s secret reason for building such an enormous and extravagant residence on such a remote and treacherous island. But dragons or no dragons, the location proved to be a mistake. Price Palace may have taken years to complete, but when Mount Forge erupted, it was swept away in minutes.
The massive lava flows leveled not just the mansion but also all the trees and greenery and everything else that surrounded it. Now, seventy years later, there wasn’t much left beyond a few columns, a broken wall, and a statue or two.
One of the few traces of the palace that remained fully intact was a square metal drain strategically hidden behind a boulder. Actually, it wasn’t so much a drain as a trapdoor, as anybody who happened to see the two red-haired sisters emerging from it that afternoon would have noticed. Alas, the sisters themselves couldn’t see much one way or another; the bright light was blinding after the darkness of the tunnel.
“This place always reminds me of the Parthenon,” said Mira, shielding her eyes with her hand.* “Or maybe Mount Olympus.”
Leira looked blank and shook her head.
“You know, ancient Greece? Greek gods…?”
Still shaking her head, Leira put her finger to her lips.
“Let me put this in terms you’ll understand,” said Mira. “Just think of where Wonder Woman comes from. That island—”**
“Shh!” Leira whispered. “I think I hear somebody.”
“Oh!” Mira put her hand to her mouth.
They listened; the ruins were silent. Then a bird suddenly squawked and flew away.
Mira tapped Leira on the shoulder. Somebody was peering out from behind a half-fallen column. The sisters peered back.
For a moment, nobody moved.
Then the person behind the column cracked a smile. “Oh, it’s you guys!” he said, stepping out into the open. “What are you doing here?”
It was Jonah.
He was followed by Kwan and Pablo.
“Jeez. You scared the heck out of us!” said Mira.
“Sorry,” said the Worms in chorus.
Leira explained how she and Mira had escaped from the library. “What about you? How’d you get out?”
“We didn’t,” said Kwan. “We were late for the meeting because we decided to check a few spots down below Bamboo Bay—in case that kid was a floater.”
“When we saw those guys guarding the library, we made tracks,” said Pablo.
“Good thinking,” said Leira grimly. “You didn’t know how right you were about this place being a prison.”
“Yo, dudes—” Jonah pointed to a large black helicopter flying overhead. It had two propellers and looked like it was built for battle. “What’s that thing dangling from that chopper?”
“That’s not just a chopper—that’s a Chinook,” said Pablo. “Military-style.”
“Okay, if you say so,” said Jonah. “What’s that thing dangling from that Chinook?”
“It looks like a train car,” said Kwan, squinting. “Or a shipping container.”
Pablo nodded, as if this had only confirmed his suspicions. “They’re probably smuggling contraband onto the island. Like child slaves. Or a nuclear weapon…”
“Not a weapon, a dragon,” said Leira. “It’s a dragon cage.”
“A what?” said her sister.
“A dragon cage.”
“They’re smuggling a dragon onto the island?” said Kwan, incredulous.
“Off the island,” said Leira.
“Like a Komodo dragon?” asked Jonah.
Leira shook her head. “Like a dragon dragon. Come on, everybody, we have to get to the dragon cave. Now!”
“The where…?” said Mira, who was beginning to worry her sister had lost her mind. “I thought you said dragon cage.”
“I did. I’ll explain on the way!”
The campers looked at one another. What in the world was Leira talking about?
Even running most of the way, it took them over twenty minutes to reach the vicinity of the cave, at which point they had to slow down to avoid detection.
Stealthily, one after another, the campers scrambled up the rocks above and to the side of the cave. They stopped only when they found a place where they were protected by shadow but had a view of the cave entrance and the small plateau in front of it.
The shipping container was on the ground, and the helicopter had already returned with its next piece of dangling cargo: a big yellow crane, folded into itself. At the moment, the helicopter was hovering low while Brett’s father’s men worked to unhook the crane from its chains.
“See those holes in the side of the container?” said Leira over the sound of the helicopter. “I told you it was a cage.”
“Yeah, a big freaking cage for a big freaking animal,” said Kwan.
“A dragon,” said Leira.
Kwan laughed. “Whatever you say.”
Mira gestured to three men who were carrying bundles of short sticks into the cave. “What’s that? Dynamite?”
“Yup,” said Pablo, who was fairly expert in explosives.
Mira looked horrified. “They’re going to blow up the cave? Why?”
Pablo shrugged. “Make it wider, maybe? For that… big freaking animal.”
“Say they’re really looking for a dragon, just for the sake of argument,” said Jonah, who kept studying the cave entrance as though he were seeing inside—which his friends knew he very well might be. “What makes them think they’re going to find one in there?”
Leira pointed. “Him, I’m guessing.”
Below, just outside the cave, Flint was talking animatedly to one of Brett’s father’s men. (Brett would have recognized him as Mack, his father’s bodyguard.)
“They gave him a phone,” said Leira. “That’s probably all it took for him to sell out the whole camp.”
Jonah’s eyes narrowed. “Well, that part I believe.… What a jerk.”
Now free of the container, the helicopter rose higher in the air and started circling at a distance.
As the sound of the helicopter faded, they could hear Flint’s furious voice echoing in the rocky canyon. “But they said they’d take me with them! We had a deal!”
“Well, the deal changed, kid!” Mack shouted back. “Now get out of the way before we blow you up along with the cave!”
Listening, Leira let out a gasp.
“What’s wrong?” Mira asked.
“I just realized,” said Leira. “Clay is probably still inside. And that kid Brett, too.”*
“They’re inside with the dragon, you mean?” said Jonah.
Kwan stared at him. “Wait—you believe her now?”
Jonah pulled at his Afro uncomfortably.
It was Leira’s turn to be surprised. “Really? It’s down there?”
Mira shook her head. “You’re the one who keeps saying—”
“I knew there was supposed to be a dragon,” said Leira. “I didn’t know there actually was one.”
Everyone looked at Jonah for confirmation.
“There’s something down there—that’s all I know.”
He glanced again at the cave entrance, then closed his eyes, concentrating. The others waited nervously, knowing that his visions were not always easy to summon.
“Well, are they going to be okay?” asked Leira, unable to stand it any longer.
“Yeah… I think so,” said Jonah.
“You think? That’s not good enough,” said Mira anxiously. “You have to be sure.”
“They’re caught between a dragon and a bunch of dynamite!” Jonah protested. “How sure can I be?”
Everybody looked at the mountainside, their faces somber. You didn’t have to be psychic to picture all the destruction that was about to be wreaked underneath.
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CHAPTER
THIRTEEN
AMBER
The captain’s quarters on the Imperial Conquest looked much as I imagine the captain’s quarters must look on any other cruise ship: that is, like a suite in an overpriced, poorly decorated hotel. (Have I told you how I feel about cruises?)
If you ask me, Captain Abad was fighting a losing battle, but she had done her best to personalize her stateroom with art and mementos from her travels. An Indonesian wave-pattern batik was hanging above her bed; a pair of Japanese temple dogs sat on either side of her desk (stone temple dogs, not living ones); and a photo of the captain as a young girl holding a sailing trophy was on the shelf. But perhaps the most notable object was the one currently in her hand: a six-foot-long wind instrument carved from a tree branch in the Australian outback.
In the past, the captain had often wondered why she kept this oversized souvenir; she rarely blew on it, and she could never get it to sound the way it was supposed to. Now, however, she was considering the possibility that it might have a use after all: to alert her crew to her captivity. She doubted that they’d be able to rescue her, but at least they would know the score. She put her lips to the mouthpiece and blew experimentally.
All that came out was a sputter.
“Captain Abad?”
Lowering her didgeridoo to her side, the captain looked up to see a smiling young woman in a mint-green velour tracksuit entering the suite. “Welcome, Mrs. Perry.”
“Oh, call me Amber, please. I’m not Mrs. Perry yet!”
“And you may call me Sofia. After all, I’m not really captaining this ship anymore, am I?” said the captain with an ironic edge to her voice.
“Oh, don’t say that! I’m sure this will all be over soon,” said Amber, waving away the guard who had let her into the room. He retreated a few steps but stopped beside the door. He had no intention of leaving the two women alone.
Captain Abad wasn’t sure what to make of her bright and shiny guest. Rich men like Brett Perry often had young girlfriends like Amber—the captain saw it all the time on her ship—but she suspected that behind Amber’s toothpaste-commercial smile there were hidden depths. Captain Abad hoped there were hidden depths, anyway. Her life, and the lives of her passengers and crew, just might depend on it.
“I’m sorry I don’t have anything to offer you,” said the captain.
“Oh, everyone eats too much on this ship,” said Amber airily.
“Yes… usually.”
The only thing the captain had been given to eat that day was stale bread. She was being treated no better than a common prisoner. Why not just put her in the brig and be done with it?
“What is that… amazing thing you’re holding?” asked Amber.
“It’s a didgeridoo. An aboriginal instrument. Takes great lung power. Would you like to try it?”
“Um, not right now, thank you.” Amber uncapped a stick of strawberry lip balm and applied it in one quick motion.
SMOOCHIE,
it said in big letters on the side.
The captain thought the lip balm looked—and smelled—like something a four-year-old girl would choose. She hid her distaste by leaning her didgeridoo against the wall.
“So, you wanted to see me?” said Amber, recapping her lip balm.
“I just can’t believe you’re mixed up in all this,” replied the captain. “You seem so kind, so reasonable.…”
“Compared to Mr. Perry, you mean?” said Amber. “Please forgive him. He’s totally out of his mind right now. You know, with his son missing and everything—”
“Of course,” said the captain cautiously.
She wanted to warn Amber that her husband-to-be was a killer who had pushed his own son off the ship, but she had to gain Amber’s trust first. “Well, I wanted to say thank you for asking them to untie me, that’s all.”
“Oh, that was just a silly mistake! I mean, imagine—what were they thinking? Is there something else I can do for you?”
“Not for me,” said the captain. “But you should know that the passengers are getting restless. Some of them suspect there is more going on than a search for a missing boy. I can hear them outside my stateroom window.”
“Oh?”
“You can only ply them with free booze for so long. Perhaps if you intervened with Mr. Perry, he would cut short this operation of his and concentrate on what matters now, which is finding his son—”
Amber raised her hand. “Hold on—because I think we have an itsy-bitsy, teensy-weensy little misunderstanding,” she said, her smile never leaving her lips. “I so, so want to make you happy, but you see, the truth is—and I know this might be a surprise—Mr. Perry is only following my orders. Everything he does, he does because I ask him to—that sweetheart! Including, most especially, the work on Price Island.”
Captain Abad stared. Amber had hidden depths after all—just not in the way that the captain had hoped.
“I know, crazy, right?” said Amber with a little giggle. “Maybe our styles are a little different, but we both command big operations. Deep down, we’re the same, you and I.”
“No, we’re not,” said the captain fiercely. “Nobody under my command has ever pushed a passenger off my ship!”
Amber’s smile disappeared for the first time. “Brett junior’s fall was a terrible accident,” she said stiffly. “But what’s that expression? To make an omelet you have to break a few eggs? Well, if we have to, we’ll break a few more. If there’s any trouble on this ship, any at all, the troublemakers will join Brett junior at the bottom of the ocean… and so will you. Capeesh, Captain?”
“Yes, I think so.” The captain shivered. You don’t spend your life as a sailor without hearing a lot of bloody stories, but rarely had she heard someone speak so callously of human life.
Amber’s smile returned. “Fantabulous! Now, what can we do to calm down all those annoying passengers?”
At that very moment, on a lower floor of the ship, a rabbit sat behind a velvet curtain, nibbling lettuce leaves out of a top hat as if the hat were a salad bowl.
The rabbit was white and furry, a classic magician’s rabbit, and the hat was black and shiny, a classic magician’s hat. Sadly, the man pacing back and forth beside them, munching on a small bar of chocolate, didn’t look like much of a magician, classic or otherwise. His suit was dirty and rumpled. His face pale and unshaved. His eyes tired and desperate. Judging by his appearance, nobody would ever call him the Amazing So-and-So or the Marvelous Whosie-Whatsit or Somebody-or-Other the Magnificent. In short, he was the last person you would expect to see as the headliner on a cruise-ship marquee.
Nevertheless, this magician—for magician indeed he was—had evidently impressed somebody enough to earn the all-important job of entertaining passengers on the Imperial Conquest, and I ask you to consider the possibility that he might have been a slightly better magician than he looked. Believe me, he had his share of critics—chief among them himself—without your contributing to the chorus. So please be kind.*
Even on a good day, the magician suffered from performance anxiety, but today his anxiety about the performance ahead was exacerbated by his anxiety about something else. (In truth, his performance anxiety was often exacerbated by anxieties of other sorts, but does that mean we should be any less sympathetic? On the contrary.) Like everyone else aboard the ship, the magician was alarmed that they were stalled in the middle of the ocean. Unlike everyone else, the magician knew a thing or two about the small volcanic island on which the ship’s owner was purportedly searching for his missing son. He knew about Mount Forge and Price Palace and Earth Ranch. He even knew about the grimoires and the secret library-within-the-library. Unfortunately, what he knew did not reassure him; it made him more worried.
The magician stopped pacing and addressed the rabbit. “Stop giving me the silent treatment! I’m just as upset as you are. I didn’t sleep a wink last night. And you know me, when my insomnia kicks in…”
&nb
sp; The rabbit continued to eat, ignoring him.
“How could I have known ahead of time that the ship was headed for Price Island?” the magician protested, as if the rabbit had accused him of ignoring this crucial piece of information. “We got on board to track the Midnight Sun’s movements, not predict them!”
The magician reopened the chocolate wrapper in his hand and examined it. Not even a smear of chocolate left. He crumpled it in frustration.
“Yes, I know they’re building a mysterious giant arena—I was the one who told you that. And our information is that it’s in the desert, not on an island; that’s my point.… What? Sure, I agree that deserts are dry and water is wet.… Correct: There aren’t many deserts in the middle of water. So…? Then why did I think this ship was headed for a desert? I don’t know, smarty-pants. Maybe I thought it would dock, and then they would drive into the desert. How ’bout that…? Aargh. Why I am even answering these questions?!”
The rabbit tossed aside a bad lettuce leaf with its teeth, then tried another one.
“Plus, I always assumed Price Island was so well protected that the Midnight Sun didn’t even know about it! I know, I know, they know everything.” The magician sighed. “But what am I supposed to do now? I can’t even warn the camp about who they’re dealing with. Earth Ranch communications are so secure that you can’t communicate with them! What do they expect? Carrier pigeons? Owls? I’m sorry, but all I’ve got is you. And last time I checked, you don’t fly. Or swim.”
He stared at the rabbit as if daring the rabbit to contradict him.
The rabbit stared back.
“Don’t look at me like that! I know I’m the reason Clay is there, but Clay can take care of himself,” said the obviously guilt-ridden magician. “Did you know when he was ten and I was twenty-two he was already as tall as I was? How ’bout that? It’s almost like he was the big brother! Besides, he probably won’t run into them anyway. It’s not the campers that they’re after.”