Got it.
My fingers closed on the golden sphere and I thudded to the ground. The tracks were to my left, inches away. The locomotive was a blur of black looming closer, and my teeth rattled with the noise.
I stretched my arm out and tossed the Loculus directly on the tracks.
Marco yanked me away from behind, pulling me to safety. Together we rolled onto the gravel, huddling protectively as the hulking train sped by. The ca-CHUNK-ca-CHUNK-ca-CHUNK of its wheels on the track was deafening.
“Duuude, what did you just do?” Marco screamed.
His face was red, distorted. I had never seen him so angry.
But my eyes were drawing upward, to a small, fast-moving cloud of blackness floating over the fence. It was dropping fast, gaining human form.
“Watch out!” I cried as a zombie materialized, its shredded clothes flapping in the air directly over Marco’s head.
He spun around, crouching for impact.
But the Shadow never reached the ground.
Instead it vanished into thin air.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
ONE LAST LOOK BACK
WE STARED SILENTLY at the place where the Shadow had disappeared. The train had moved north, its rhythmic clatter mixing with the sound of cars on the highway. I couldn’t see the Loculus now, but I knew it was gone. Destroyed.
I felt like a part of me had been ripped out and thrown under the train, too.
“What the heck just happened?” Marco moaned.
But I didn’t answer. Instead I looked up the hill. In the darkness, at this distance, it was impossible to make out faces. But I could recognize a few shapes up there, walking unsteadily away from Grant’s Tomb. There. I recognized the walk. “She made it,” I muttered. “Mom’s alive.”
I felt Aly’s hand on my arm. I watched Mom for a moment, not sure what to do. I noticed that she was gazing upward now. They all were, their necks craned toward the sky.
I followed their glance. The black smoke had lifted, and I could see a dull shimmer passing across the faces of the park path lights, working its way up toward the moon.
“The Shadows . . .” Cass murmured.
“That’s it?” Aly said. “They’re gone?”
Marco scratched his head. “That was killer, dude.”
“I had to do it,” I said.
“Yeah. Maybe you did,” Marco replied with a big sigh. “I guess I owe you. For keeping my peeps out of Zombieland. Well, most of them. I think Stavros is going to want to kiss you.”
“What about you, Marco?” Aly asked. “What about all four of us? That’s the end of the game. No sudden-death overtime. I hope you’re proud of yourself.”
“Well, who knows?” Marco said. “Maybe Brother D has something up his sleeve. He’s up there now.”
Cass glanced up the hill. “Oh? Nice of him to show.”
“He’ll be happy to see you.” Marco climbed the fence and jumped to the other side. “He likes you.”
“Wait,” Aly said. “You’re leaving us?”
“Dudes, the invitation’s open,” Marco replied. “Come with me. It’s never a bad idea to side with a winner.”
“Winner?” Cass said. “That coward Dimitrios? What planet are you from?”
“Dude, every game has to have a winner and a loser,” Marco said. “Just think about it.”
We stared at him in utter disbelief. He shrugged sadly. “Hey, I gotta have faith. I know you’ll get it. You guys are too smart not to.”
As he turned to walk up the hill, I could see two other figures at the top, making their way downward.
“Jack?” my mom called out. “Jack, are you all right?”
I turned to answer but stopped myself.
Mom’s voice tugged at me hard. It was the voice that summoned and soothed. Encouraged and brightened. Well, it had, way back when. But six years was a long time, and she had become someone else. Something else. Something I couldn’t trust.
“Jack, honey?”
Peanut butter sandwiches. Hot cocoa. Read alouds.
Fakery. Betrayal. Attacks. Slaughter.
I pulled Cass and Aly into the darkness, far from any streetlamp. “Cass,” I whispered. “Give me the Loculus of Invisibility.”
He looked at me a good long moment. “Are you sure?” he said softly.
“Torquin’s gone,” Aly reminded me. “Your dad is under arrest. The Loculus is destroyed. We’re not going to live much longer. We have nothing.”
“Take it out,” I said.
Quickly Cass removed the canvas sack. I reached in and took out the orb. “All of us,” I said.
We put our hands on it. I felt the shimmer of energy course through me.
“Jack?” Mom was nearly to the fence now, looking. Looking right through me. “Where are you?”
Her eyes were wide, and even in the darkness I could see the fear in them as she stared at the track. “Oh dear heavens, the train . . .”
She leaped up the fence, getting herself over in quick, expert moves. When she landed on the other side, she let out a sob and scrambled across the gravel. The train was long gone, its rear red lights winking distantly along the Hudson. She scanned the tracks, her face etched with horror, her glistening cheeks wet in the streetlamp light.
She was worried. About me. Convinced that since I was no longer here I must have died.
My heart was sinking. Words welled up from my gut—I’m right behind you. I’m okay.
Aly took my hand.
Slowly Mom walked onto the track. Jammed into the gravel in the center of the track were the pieces of the broken Loculus—dozens of them, glowing golden in the dim light. Mom stooped to pick some of them up. I could hear her crying now.
I couldn’t do it any longer. Couldn’t hide.
As she turned back, I let go of the Loculus. Cass let out a gasp.
Mom’s eyes immediately looked up and locked on mine. In the flash of a moment I saw grief give way to shock and joy.
But before I could move, before I could do a thing, her eyes moved and her expression changed abruptly.
When she looked at me again an instant later, her intent was so strong, so direct, that the strength of her glance nearly knocked me back on my heels.
Stop now. Don’t do this.
“Sister Nancy!” Brother Dimitrios’s deep, unmistakable voice boomed from behind us.
I shoved my hand backward and touched the Loculus. Behind us, the tall monk was stepping awkwardly down the steep incline, eyes on his sandaled feet. In the darkness, his beard seemed to obliterate the bottom of his sallow, bony face. But as he neared the bottom, glancing toward Mom, there was no mistaking the coldness in his eyes.
“Where did they go?” he demanded. “Where are our assets?”
“You ask now, Brother Dimitrios,” Mom said, “but when we were fighting the forces of Artemisia, where were you then? Protecting your own assets?”
He climbed the fence with some difficulty and fell awkwardly to the ground. Brushing himself off, he looked at the shards in Mom’s hand.
“Oh, by Massarym’s grave . . .” he said, his voice falling to a dismayed hush. Carefully he lifted a piece of the Loculus and turned it in his hand. “He didn’t . . .”
“Threw it under a train,” Mom said. “The boy did. Jack.”
“So the prophecy of Brother Charles has been fulfilled,” Brother Dimitrios murmured. “The destroyer . . .”
“Shall rule . . .” Mom continued.
Brother Dimitrios gazed slowly back up the hill. “I thought it was the athletic one. Marco the warrior. What an . . . interesting surprise.”
“He’s a strong young man in his own right,” Mom said.
Brother Dimitrios shook his head uncertainly. “I suppose there is no arguing what is meant to be.”
My head was reeling.
The message in the Charles Newton letter—The destroyer shall rule—wasn’t about Mausolus. It wasn’t about Artemisia.
It was about At
lantis. About the person destined to rule it.
In the new world, you can keep calling me Marco. But to everyone else, I’ll be His Highness King Marco the First. That was what Marco had told us in Babylon—Brother Dimitrios’s plan for him. A plan that had been misunderstood.
Mom was still holding tight to the shards. What did they say? What ruler did they predict? And what was going to happen to Marco now?
“We must convene immediately,” Mom said. “Go ahead, Brother Dimitrios, tell the others we will have a very long night. I will collect pieces of the Loculus.”
Mom watched Brother Dimitrios climb back over the fence and begin the trek up the hill. But she did not turn back to the track to pick up any more shards. Instead, she waited a good thirty seconds, motionless.
Aly gripped me tight. I didn’t dare move.
Mom began walking, veering toward us. I wanted to reveal myself but her face was still closed up, still a mask of unmistakable no. As she passed, she let something drop from her hand. Without pausing, she continued on.
I stooped to pick it up.
When I finally managed to look back, Mom had turned. I realized I had let go of the Loculus and was visible again.
Mom’s eyes blazed. I gave her a shrug, holding out the shard. “Who?” I mouthed.
“Acch, these miserable sandals,” came Brother Dimitrios’s voice from the darkness. “Will you help me, Sister Nancy?”
Mom’s face went taut with panic. I reached back quickly to touch the Loculus of Invisibility, but my eyes never left Mom.
And as she climbed up toward Dimitrios, I saw her point directly toward me.
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About the Author
PETER LERANGIS is the author of more than one hundred and sixty books, which have sold more than five million copies and been translated into thirty-three different languages. His books include The Colossus Rises and Lost in Babylon in the New York Times bestselling Seven Wonders series, and two books in The 39 Clues series (The Sword Thief and The Viper’s Nest). Peter is a Harvard graduate with a degree in biochemistry and has run a marathon and gone rock climbing during an earthquake—though not on the same day. He lives in New York City with his wife, musician Tina deVaron, and their two sons, Nick and Joe. In his spare time, he likes to eat chocolate.
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Credits
Cover illustration © 2014 by Torstein Norstrand
Cover design by Joe Merkel
Copyright
Seven Wonders Book 3: The Tomb of Shadows
Text by Peter Lerangis, copyright © 2014 by HarperCollins Publishers
Illustrations copyright © 2014 by Torstein Norstrand
Map art by Mike Reagan, copyright © 2014 by HarperCollins Publishers
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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Library of Congress catalog card number: 2014931071
ISBN 978-0-06-207046-3 (trade bdg.)
ISBN 978-0-06-232546-4 (int’l ed.)
EPUB Edition © MARCH 2014 ISBN 9780062070487
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First Edition
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Peter Lerangis, The Tomb of Shadows
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