Did I say I was starving?
I was starving. I hadn’t eaten in five hours.
Most of the shops were shuttering for the evening, but the cafés and restaurants were jumping. People strolled across the plaza, slowly and aimlessly, arm in arm. Kids chased each other and played catch. In the restaurants, stray cats wove around people’s legs, looking for scraps, while entertainers in flowing costumes sang and played tambourines, guitars, and strange instruments that sounded like oboes. Old men sat silently outside the cafés at backgammon tables, sipping coffee and amber-colored drinks. An outdoor bar called America!! had two huge flat-screen TVs, one blaring a soccer game in Greek and the other an old rerun of Everybody Loves Raymond in English.
In the center was Zeus.
Or something Zeus-ish.
The statue glowered over the surroundings like a creepy, unwanted party guest. No one seemed to be paying it much notice. Its face and shoulders were peeling and pockmarked, like it had a skin disease. Its eyes were pointed in the direction of a flat-screen TV. Over time the eyeballs had eroded, so it looked like a grown-up Child of the Corn. In its raised hand was a big soccer ball–like thing, but I could barely see it under a dense crowd of birds.
“Behold, the Loculus of Pigeon Droppings,” Cass mumbled, as we slowly walked around the plaza. “Held aloft by Zeus, God of Couch Potatoes, now approaching his record two millionth consecutive hour of TV viewing.”
“Can’t you be serious for once?” Aly hissed.
I could feel the curious eyes of the café-dwelling old men. One of the musicians moved toward us through the crowd—a girl about our age, maybe a little older. The hem of her skirt was raggedy, but the fabric was a rich patchwork of reds, purples, and blues, spangled with bright baubles. Her ankles and wrists jangled with bracelets. As she caught my eye, she smiled and then said, “Deutsch? Svenska? Eenglees?”
“Uh, English,” I said. “American. No money. Sorry.”
One of the café waiters came running toward us, shouting at the beggar girl to chase her away. As she ran off, he gestured toward the café. “Come! Eat! Fish! Music! I give you good price!”
Now customers and coffee sippers were staring at the commotion. “This is bad,” I whispered. “We don’t want to attract public attention. This is not how you stage an abduction. Kidnappers need quiet.”
“Don’t look now,” Cass said, “but they’re here. Other side of the plaza. We’re six o’clock, they’re twelve. Just to the left of the big TV!”
The TV was no longer playing Everybody Loves Raymond but an old black-and-white episode of I Love Lucy. Sitting at a small round table were four men in brown monk robes.
The Massarene.
I couldn’t tell if they were the exact same goons who’d tried to kill us in Rhodes. We were too far away. Those pious robes hid a gang of thugs who would shoot at thirteen-year-old kids from helicopters.
“What do we do?” Aly asked.
“They tried to murder us once already!” Cass said.
“That was before the Massa knew who we were,” I said. “Remember, they need us.”
“So we just walk up to their tables?” Cass asked. “Like, ‘Yia sou, dudes! Can we offer you some baklava for dessert, or maybe a kidnapping?’”
“Just let them see us,” I said. “Come on, follow me.”
The shortest route was directly across the plaza. People crisscrossed back and forth in front of us, as the sitcom’s laugh track washed over the town square. The monks were eating and talking quietly, ignoring the TV. As we passed the statue, one of them looked up toward us. He had a thick brown unibrow and an intense, angry stare.
Aly tugged at my arm. “Where’s Cass?”
I whirled around. I could see Cass a few feet behind us, at the base of the statue. He was helping up a crying little boy who had fallen on the cobblestones. The kid’s parents smiled and thanked him, jabbering away in Greek. Cass backed away and tripped over a stone, too, landing against the statue. It looked like he was doing it on purpose, to cheer up the little boy and make him laugh. “I’ll get him,” I said.
But as I stepped toward Cass, I heard an odd cracking noise, like the turning of an ancient mill wheel.
The little boy shrieked, jumping into his father’s arms. I could hear chairs scraping behind us, people screaming.
Pop! A jagged projectile of broken stone flew toward me and I ducked.
Pop! Pop! Pop! They were flying all around now.
I scrambled backward toward the café. The monks had left their seats and were backing away. Desserts and dinners lay abandoned on tables, dropped to the ground.
“Jack!” Cass screamed.
High above him, the statue of Zeus turned, shedding more marble pieces. And it reared back with its staff, pointing it toward Cass.
CHAPTER TWELVE
BIIIIG TROUBLE
“CASS, GET AWAY from it—it thinks you’re trying to steal the Loculus!” Aly screamed.
She dived toward Cass, pulling him away from the statue.
Zeus was moving by centimeters. Each jerk of his arm cracked the marble that encased him. “Lll . . . oc . . . ul . . . ssss . . .”
The word was just barely recognizable. Each syllable was accompanied by a sickening creak.
“Um . . . um . . .” I crawled backward. My tongue felt like a strip of Velcro.
I heard a chaos of noise behind us. Screams. Chairs clattering to the pavement. Children crying. The square was clearing out. Aly clutched my left arm, Cass my right.
Within minutes, the square had completely emptied. No more old men. No bumbling waiters. No begging gypsies or bouzouki-playing musicians. Just us, the sound of the TVs, and the deep groans of the marble cracking.
A mist swirled up from the ground now in tendrils of green, yellow, and blue. It gathered around the statue, whistling and screaming.
The statue’s expression was rock stiff, but its eyes seemed to brighten and flare. With a pop of breaking stone, its mouth shot open, and it roared with a sound that seemed part voice, part earthquake. The swirls sped and thickened, and in moments Zeus was juddering as if he had been electrocuted by one of his own thunderbolts.
In that moment we could have run.
But we stayed there, bolted to the spot by shock, as a bright golden-white globe landed on the stones with barely a sound and rolled toward a café. Its surface glowed with an energy that seemed to have dissolved the centuries of grit and bird droppings. I felt my body thrumming deeply, as if each artery and vein had been plucked like a cello.
“The Song of the Heptakiklos . . .” I said.
“So it is a Loculus!” Aly said.
I couldn’t take my eyes from the orb. I staggered toward it, my head throbbing. All thoughts were gone except one: If we could take this and then rescue the Loculus of Health, we would have four.
“Jack, what are you doing?” Cass screamed.
I felt Aly grabbing me by the arm, pulling me away. We rammed into Cass, who was frozen in place, staring at the statue. We all looked up. Before our eyes, the statue’s veins of marble turned blue and red, slowly assuming the warm, fluid texture of human skin.
Zeus was shrinking. The massive statue was becoming a man.
Or maybe a god.
As the mist receded, Zeus lowered his head. His eyes were a deep brown now, his face dark, and his hair iron gray. The muscles in his arms rippled as he stepped toward us, lifting the staff high above his head. “Loculussss . . .” he murmured.
“Give it to him!” Cass screamed. “He doesn’t see it! He thinks you stole it! Yo! Zeus! Your godliness! O Zeus! Look—it’s on the ground!”
“He doesn’t understand English!” Aly said.
“IIII’LL GUB YOUUUU, MY PITY!” the statue bellowed.
“That sounds like English!” Cass said. “What’s he saying?”
“Wait. ‘I’ll get you, my pretty’?” Aly said. “From The Wizard of Oz?”
The statue was moving slowly, creakily.
It clearly hadn’t moved in a long time and its eyesight wasn’t good. I had no intention of backing away. I wanted that Loculus. “Guys, I’m going after it. Back me up. Distract Zeus.”
“Are you out of your mind?” Cass screamed. “We came here to be kidnapped!”
“We came here to win back our lives,” I said. “Who knows if we’ll ever have this chance again? Back me up!”
“B-but—” Cass stammered.
Aly placed a hand on his shoulder. Stepping between Cass and the statue, she straightened herself to full height. “Yo! Lightning Boy!”
The statue turned to face her.
And I moved slowly, step by step backward, through the shadows, toward the Loculus. The statue’s eyes didn’t waver from Aly. He was speaking a string of words in a strange language. It sounded vaguely Greek, of which I understand exactly zero, but the rhythms of it seemed weirdly familiar. Like I could hear the music but couldn’t identify the instruments.
Go, McKinley. Now.
I turned. The pale moonlight picked up the contour of the fallen orb in the shadow of a café. As I crept closer, my head was jammed up with the Song of the Heptakiklos now. Gone was the noise from the TVs, from Aly’s conversation. The Loculus was calling to me as if it were alive. As I reached for it, I heard something behind me, in a deep, growly rasp.
“OHHHH, LUUUUCY, YOU ARE IN BIIIIG TROUBLE NOW.”
I turned. Aly and Cass were both gawking at the statue. “Could you repeat that?” Aly said.
The statue lifted one leg and hauled it forward. It thumped to the ground. “TO THE MOOOON, ALIIICE!”
“What’s he saying?” Cass asked.
“I Love Lucy,” Aly said. “The Honeymooners. Those—those are lines from old sitcoms.”
From behind me came the sound of a laugh track. “That TV . . .” I said. “Zeus has been watching it for years. Decades. It’s the only English he knows. The sitcoms and the ads.”
The former statue was staring at me now. Its pupils were dark black pools. The muscles in its face seemed to be tightening, its mouth drawing back. As I grabbed the Loculus, I felt a jolt up my arm, as if I’d stuck my finger in an electric socket. I tried to hold back a scream, gritting my teeth as hard as I could.
“Jack!” Aly screamed.
I turned just in time to feel a whoosh against my cheek. Zeus’s staff flew past me, embedding itself in the ground.
Holding tight to the Loculus, I ran for the edge of the town square. In a moment Aly and Cass were by my side. “Follow me!” Cass shouted, leading us down an unlit alleyway.
As we raced out of town, I could see pairs of eyes staring at us out of darkened windows. Mothers and fathers. Children.
A voice behind us thundered loudly, echoing against the stucco walls. “LOOOOCUULUUUUS!”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE FOURTH LOCULUS
IF I THOUGHT Zeus was a creaky old has-been, I was dead wrong.
We were running so fast I could barely feel my feet touch the cobblestones. But I could hear the steady thump of leather sandals behind us. The street was ridiculously narrow. We were running single file, with me at the rear, Aly in the middle and looking over her shoulders, and Cass in front.
“COWABUNGAAAA!” the statue shouted.
Aly’s eyes widened. “Duck!” she cried.
I hit the ground. And Zeus’s staff hurtled past us overhead like a javelin, impaling itself in the grate of a steel sewer basin with a metallic clunk.
I leaped to my feet, holding the Loculus under my arm like a football. Zeus wasn’t more than twenty yards away now. I was going to be shish kebab unless I got the staff before Zeus did.
I scrambled and slid to a stop at the staff. Zeus roared when he saw what I was trying to do. The weapon was pretty well jammed into the grating, but on the third tug, I managed to pry it loose—along with the sewer grating, which went flying across the sidewalk.
“GGEEEEAAAAAGGHHH!” I didn’t recognize the sound of my own voice. I lifted my arm and felt the weight of the staff. The thing must have been nearly as heavy as I was, but it felt impossibly light in my hands.
Zeus leaped toward me, arms outstretched. My body moved into action. I spun to the left. My arm swung the staff, connecting with the statue’s legs in midair. He flipped forward, his face smacking hard onto the street. Without missing a beat, I raised the staff high and stood over him.
He rolled over and scrambled away on his back, a look of terror spreading across his face.
I could see Cass and Aly now, looking at me from behind the building in astonishment.
I was pretty scared, too. What had I just done?
“I WOULD HAVE GOTTEN AWAY WITH IT, TOO . . .” the statue said, “. . . IF IT WEREN’T FOR YOU MEDDLING KIDS . . . !”
“What?” I replied.
“I THINK THIS IS THE BEGINNING OF A BEAUTIFUL FRIENDSHIP.”
“Scooby-Doo!” Aly shouted. “Casablanca!”
“Is that his only English?” I said. “Aly, you’re an old movie geek. Can you give him an answer he’ll understand?”
“Um . . . ‘Surrender, Dorothy’?” she said.
But Zeus wasn’t listening. Cocking his head, he stepped forward, staring at me. I raised the staff, and he stopped. “Masssarrrymmm?”
His voice was softer now. It was a question. A real question. And in a flash I was beginning to understand this thing. “Wow . . .” I said. “He thinks I’m Massarym. He thinks I’m the one who gave him the Loculus.”
“M-m-must be a family resemblance,” Cass said.
I stepped forward. “Jack,” I said, pointing to myself. “I am Jack.”
“Dzack,” the statue said, pointing to me.
“Right—Jack, not Massarym,” I said. “So. Can’t you leave us alone? Go back! You don’t need this Loculus. What are you going to do with it? You’re Zeus! You can throw thunderbolts and stuff. Do you understand? Go back!”
Zeus shook his head. His cheeks seemed to sag. “GO . . . ?”
“Home!” I said.
“PHONE HOME . . . ?” Zeus growled.
Oh, great. E.T. He was stomping closer to me now. That was the only way to describe it. His legs were muscular but still a little stiff. I could see now that his eyes were not a solid color but a roiling mass of shapes and colors, all tumbling around like a miniature storm. I backed off, keeping Cass and Aly behind me. With one hand I held tight to the Loculus, with the other I kept the staff firmly pointed.
“Just give it to him or he’ll kill us!” Cass said, grabbing the Loculus out of my hands.
He caught me by surprise. As the Loculus came free, the staff fell from my grip. It was too heavy for me to hold. With a crack, it broke into three pieces against the cobblestones.
And in that moment, I knew exactly what kind of Loculus we had. Lifting that staff, leaping like a ninja—it wasn’t adrenaline that let me do those things.
“Cass, that’s a Loculus of Strength!” I cried out. “Give it back to me!”
Zeus and I moved toward him at the same time. With a scream, Cass jumped back and dropped the Loculus like it was hot. It rolled away down the street and I dived after it, landing with a thud on the sidewalk. As I hit the side of a building, I saw the Loculus resting against the bottom of a rain gutter opening a few feet away.
As I closed both hands around it tightly, I turned.
Zeus was coming at me now. In his hand was a dagger. Its hilt was huge, its blade jagged like the edge of a broken glass bottle.
I heard Aly and Cass screaming. But I had the Loculus, and it gave me a power I never thought possible. I felt my free arm swinging downward, picking up a broken section of Zeus’s staff.
I whirled, swinging the shaft like a bat. It connected with Zeus’s torso and sent him flying across the narrow alley. As he hit the wall and sank down, I grabbed him by the collar and lifted him above my head.
I, Jack McKinley, had Zeus in the palms of my hands!
A thick, rusty nail jutted from the out
er wall of a stucco building. I thrust Zeus against it, taking care that the nail ripped only through his thick tunic, not him. Because that’s the kind of guy I am. At least when I have a Loculus of Strength.
Zeus roared, flailing wildly as he dangled from the wall. I knew he wouldn’t stay up there long.
At the end of the alley were a couple of abandoned pushcarts. One of them was full of leather goods—satchels, sandals, sacks, clothing.
I ran over and grabbed an extra-large vest. Tucking the Loculus under my arm, I ripped a long shred of leather as if it were paper. “Stay calm,” I said, approaching Zeus with caution. “This isn’t going to hurt.”
I grabbed his arms. I couldn’t believe I was actually wrestling them into position. As I tied them together tightly, Zeus cried out, “I’LL GET YOU, YOU SKWEWY WABBIT!”
As I backed away, Aly was laughing.
“What’s so funny?” Cass said. “Did you see what Jack just did?”
“Sorry . . . sorry,” Aly said. “It’s just . . . Elmer Fudd?”
“Yeah, well, he doesn’t look so godlike,” I said, “but he’ll break loose. Trust me, he’s not going to stop until he gets his Loculus back. And I don’t want us to be near him when that happens.” I glanced over my shoulder. In the moonlight, the steep foothills of the Peloponnesian mountains looked to be about a mile or so away. They were dotted with trees and small black holes.
Caves.
“Let’s book,” I said.
We ran up the alley and wound through the streets away from the center of town, leaving Zeus’s anguished cries behind.
Just behind a shack at the edge of town, I stopped. “Wait a second.”
“Jack, we have to keep moving,” Cass said. “We can’t stay here. That thing is going to get loose and kill us.”
“He turned into Zeus because we got close to him—we activated him,” I said. “The same way that the other Select did, centuries ago. I’m hoping he goes back to being a statue once we’re far enough away.”