The Curse of the King
Read The Curse of the King Online
Authors: Peter Lerangis
AP
The Tides Turn
EDICATION
F
OR
M
OM AND
D
AD
,
WHO HAVE READ
EVERYTHING
SINCE THE VERY FIRST SENTENCE
ONTENTS
Chapter One: The Wrath of Yappy
Chapter Two: Twerp Perps, Snalp, and the Fat Lady
Chapter Three: The Enemy of Interesting
Chapter Seven: Down and Out in LA
Chapter Eight: The Humpty Dumpty Project
Chapter Ten: If It Looks Like a Hoax . . . ?
Chapter Eleven: God of Couch Potatoes
Chapter Twelve: Biiiig Trouble
Chapter Thirteen: The Fourth Loculus
Chapter Fourteen: Escape from the Nostril
Chapter Fifteen: The Dream Continued
Chapter Sixteen: A Goat Moment
Chapter Seventeen: Battle on the Mount
Chapter Eighteen: Loser, Loser, Loser
Chapter Twenty: In the Matter of Victor Rafael Quiñones
Chapter Twenty-One: Slipping Away
Chapter Twenty-Two: Massa Island
Chapter Twenty-Three: Good Enough for the Cockroaches
Chapter Twenty-Four: The Illusion of Control
Chapter Twenty-Five: In Hexad de Heptimus Veritas
Chapter Twenty-Seven: The Seventh Codex
Chapter Twenty-Eight: His Jackness
Chapter Twenty-Nine: What's a Few Million Lives . . . ?
Chapter Thirty-One: The King of Toast
Chapter Thirty-Three: Preposserous
Chapter Thirty-Four: My Sister the Monster
Chapter Thirty-Five: Goon Number Seven
Chapter Thirty-Six: Pull My Finger
Chapter Thirty-Seven: The Meathead Starts Over
Chapter Thirty-Nine: Fiddle and Bones
Chapter Forty: The Labyrinth and the Tapestry
Chapter Forty-One: Is Not Gorilla
Chapter Forty-Two: The Teflon King
Chapter Forty-Three: Braggart, Traitor, Deserter, Killer?
Chapter Forty-Four: The Sword and the Rift
Chapter Forty-Five: Something Much Worse
T
HE
W
RATH OF
Y
APPY
H
AVING LESS THAN
a year to live doesn't feel great, but it's worse when you're in a cop car that smells of armpits, cigarettes, and dog poop. “Don't New York City cops ever clean their cars?” Cass Williams mumbled.
I turned my nose to the half-open window. Aly Black was at the other end of the backseat, but Cass was stuck in the middle. Outside, music blared from a nearby apartment window. An old woman walking a Chihuahua eyed us and began yelling something I couldn't quite make out.
“Okay, what do we do now, Destroyer?” Cass asked.
“âJack' is still my name,” I said.
“âThe Destroyer Shall Rule,' that was the prophecy,” Aly replied. “And your mom pointed at you.”
“We were invisible! She could have been pointing at . . .” My voice trailed off. It was after midnight, but the way they were both glaring at me, I felt like I needed sunglasses. I was beginning to think throwing that last Loculus under a train might not have been a great idea. “Look, I'm sorry. I really am. But I had to do it, or everyone would have died. You would have done the same thing!”
Aly sighed. “Yeah, you're right. It's just . . . an adjustment, that's all. I mean, we had a chance. And now . . .”
She gave me a sad shrug. We're dead, is what she didn't say. A genetic mutation was on target to kill us before the age of fourteen. And I had sabotaged our chance to be cured. Seven Loculi was what we needed. Now one of them was in pieces under a train.
I sank back into the smelly seat. As the car slowed to a stop in front of a squat brick police station, our driver called out, “Home sweet home!”
She was a tall, long-faced woman named Officer Wendel. Her partner, Officer Gomez, quickly hauled himself out from the passenger side. He was barely taller than me but twice my width. The car rose an inch or so when he exited. “Your papa's inside, dude,” he said. “Make nice with him and make sure we don't see you again.”
“You won't,” Aly replied.
“Wait!”
cried the old woman with the Chihuahua.
“Those are devil children!”
Officer Gomez paused, but another cop waved him in. “You go ahead,” he said wearily. “We'll take care of Mrs. Pimm.”
“I recognize her,” Aly whispered. “She's the person who shows up in movie credits as Crazy New York City Neighbor.”
As Officer Gomez rushed us inside and down a short, grimy hallway, I eyed my backpack, which was slung over his shoulder. The Loculus of Flight and the Loculus of Invisibility formed two big, round bulges.
He had peeked inside but not too carefully. Which was lucky for us.
Officer Wendel walked ahead and pushed open the door to a waiting room. Dad was sitting on a plastic chair, and he stood slowly. His face was drawn and pale.
“Officers Gomez and Wendel, Washington Heights Precinct,” Gomez said. “We responded to the missing-persons alert. Found them while investigating a commotion up by Grant's Tomb.”
“Thank you, officers,” Dad said. “What kind of commotion? Are they in trouble?”
“Healthy and unharmed.” Gomez unhooked the pack and set it on a table. “We had reports of noises, people in costumeâgone by the time we got there.”
Officer Wendel chuckled. “Well, a few weirdoes in robes near the train tracks, picking up garbage. Guess the party was over. Welcome to New York!”
Dad nodded. “That's a relief. IâI'll take them home now.”
He reached for the backpack, but Officer Wendel was already unzipping it and looking inside. “Just a quick examination,” she said with an apologetic look. “Routine.”
“Officer Gomez did it already!” I pointed out.
Before Gomez could respond, a sharp barking noise came from the hallway. The old lady was inside, with her dog. Officer Wendel looked toward the noise.
I reached for the pack, but Wendel pulled it away. She opened my canvas sack and removed the basketball-sized Loculus of Flight. “Nice . . .” she said.
“A world globe,” I blurted. “We have to . . . paint the countries ontoâ”
“What the . . . ?” Officer Wendel's hand had hit the invisible second Loculus.
“It's nothing!” Cass blurted out.
“Literally,” Aly added.
Wendel tried to wriggle the Loculus out. “Is this glass?”
“A special kind of glass,” Dad said. “So clear I'll bet you can't see it!”
“Wow . . .” Wendel said. She lifted her hands high, holding up . . . absolutely nothing. Nothing that the human eye could see, that is. “I can feel it, but I can'tâ”
“I am not crazy stop treating me like I'm crazy, I saw them, I tell youâthey were floating like birds!”
Mrs. Pimm's voice was rising to a shriekâand I remembered where I'd heard
her voice and seen her face.
An open window, a dim light. She had been staring at us as the Shadows from the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus lifted us through the streets. She'd been one of the only people who'd noticed the flurries of darkness, the fact that we were being borne down the street in the invisible arms of Artemisia's minions.