The Curse of the King (14 page)

We sped across the tarmac, past about a half dozen private aircraft. “Look,” Aly whispered, pointing to a sleek jet that was being hosed down by a chain-link fence.

Slippy.

There was no mistaking the Karai stealth jet we'd flown in so many times. I wondered how long it would take the Omphalos—whoever that was—to realize the jet wasn't coming back.

I looked around for Dad. I had no idea where he was right now, but I half expected him to come running out.

Wherever you are
, I thought,
don't worry. We'll be back.
Maybe if I repeated that enough times, I'd believe it myself.

The van came to an abrupt stop. “Move!” Brother Dimitrios shouted.

We emerged from the minivan and ran up a set of metal steps to a small black eight-seater jet. Dimitrios pushed me into a thick, comfortable seat by the window.

I watched Slippy shrink to the size of a toy as we headed out over the Mediterranean.

I
DRIFTED IN
and out of sleep. Dimitrios offered us lunch, but even though I hadn't eaten in a gajillion hours, I wasn't hungry. In my waking state, I couldn't shake the image of Torquin on the ground.

For about the hundredth time, I absentmindedly touched my pocket to make sure the small shard was still there. We couldn't lose that.

A flurry of Greek words filtered back to us from the front of the aircraft. Mustafa happened to be the pilot, and after what I'd done to him in the minivan, he was not a happy camper. If Dimitrios hadn't been there, I think he would have pounded me into hamburger by now.

“Seat belts!” Mustafa snapped.

We buckled ourselves in. The sky became thick with clouds, and sharp strips of lightning crackled all around us. The plane bucked and rolled. My shoulder slammed into the airplane wall. I heard a metallic
grrrrockkk
from the underside of the plane.

I vowed to stay calm. We'd been through this before. Strange weather always surrounded the island. These were signs the plane was getting close. “Did you ever think . . .” Aly said, bouncing left and right, “that the island has a mind of its own . . . and it doesn't like the Massa?”

“Maybe if you show your smiling face out the window, it'll know friends are arriving,” I said.

Aly gripped my hand tightly. My stomach was fluttering. I should have hated the idea of returning to this sweltering, half-destroyed home of deadly creatures and horrible memories. But I was more excited than scared. “Can I confess something to you?” I said. “I hate this place but I feel a little . . . excited. Like, happy to be back. Tell me I'm not crazy.”

“You're not crazy,” she replied. “I feel it, too.”

I braced myself, expecting her to talk about seeing Marco again. But she quickly added, “We actually have a chance to live now.”

“True,” I said.

“You know what else?” Aly added. “I sense Torquin is at our backs, cheering us on.”

We looked at Cass, who hadn't said a word the whole flight. He was staring out the window as if tracking the flight of a ghost. Aly leaned forward and put a gentle hand on his shoulder. “Still thinking about the big guy, huh?”

Cass shifted away from her and exhaled without answering.

In truth, I wasn't thinking about our plan, or about Torquin. As Aly settled back, I said, “I'm nervous about seeing my mom again, Aly. I don't know how to feel about her.”

“She slipped you that shard, Jack,” Aly said. “She must be on our side.”

I shook my head. “It doesn't add up. I mean,
no contact
for seven years? And then, boom, she shows up at Massa headquarters in Egypt—and she's like one of the heads of the whole organization?”

“Jack, she was the one who made it possible for you to escape that headquarters—with the Loculi!” Aly said.

“And look where we are now,” I said. “Aly, what if she's fooling us—making us
think
she's a spy? This may all be a trick to get us over to the Dark Side.” I took a deep breath and watched as the clouds began to clear and the plane to steady. “I don't trust my own mom. But I really, really want to see her again.”

The island became a kidney-shaped green dot in the midst of a bright turquoise sea. Most of it was carpeted with a jungle of dense green, broken only by the solid black peak of Mount Onyx. Bright yellow beaches ringed the northern
coast. Soon I could make out the orderly geometry of the Karai Institute campus—red-brick buildings surrounding a quadrangle crisscrossed with brick paths.

From a distance it looked as though the Massa attack had never occurred—the soldiers hunting us down, the fires and the bombings, the chases through the trees. But as we flew closer to the campus I saw uncut grass and weed-choked paths, blackened sections of buildings that had been bombed or torched. People in ragged white uniforms were dragging equipment into the buildings, guarded by others in black suits with rifles strapped across the backs. “Those must be KI prisoners,” Cass muttered.

I looked over toward the jungle. With Torquin's help, a band of Karai had escaped there with our friend Fiddle. But my eyes fixed on three plumes of black smoke deep in the jungle. “I hope the rebels aren't in that . . .” I said.

“Or Marco . . .” Aly added.

Marco
. There it was. I could see her eyes lighting up.

“Marco's one of the Massa,” I reminded her. “Probably safe and well fed and shooting three-pointers from the top of Mount Onyx.”

“That would be, like, three-thousand-pointers,” Aly said.

The plane dipped its wings. Way down below, I could see black-suited guards waving at us. We dropped fast and touched down smoothly at the airport. This was where Fiddle would always greet us, his geeky ponytail swishing
left and right as he eyeballed the jet for damage.

As the pilot pushed open the door, a severe-looking woman with the trace of a mustache stood at attention. “At your service, Brother Dimitrios!” she barked. “Welcome back to Massa Island! I have prepared a report when you are ready.”

“‘Massa Island'?” Aly grumbled, unstrapping her seat belt. “Guess they've made themselves comfy.”

With a smile, Brother Dimitrios gestured for us to exit. As Aly stepped toward the door, Mustafa stood from his pilot seat, turning toward me. His eyes radiated pure hate. At first I thought his arms were covered with tattoos, but I realized they were bruises from the window I'd shut on him. “This will not be comfy for you,” he said in a thick Greek accent.

Brother Dimitrios exhaled. “
Vre
, Brother Mustafa,” he said with weary amusement. “Cannot we let bygones be bygones? Serves you right for being trigger-happy.”

I felt Mustafa's eyes like lasers burning into my head. As I stepped into the hatch, he shot his arm out and ripped my backpack off my shoulders. “Hey!” I shouted.

Dimitrios clucked wearily. “I will speak to Mustafa about his roughness, Jack. But of course we must have the Loculi. As a precaution, that's all. We will take extraordinary care of them.”

As I stepped out onto the tarmac, I felt my heart sinking.
Shake it off
, a voice scolded in my brain.
What were you expecting? They'd let you keep them?

“Jack . . .” Aly said, tugging on my shirt sleeve.

She and Cass were staring at a commotion at the edge of the tarmac, where a line of ragged people in filthy white uniforms was being led out of the jungle. They were heading to one of the supply buildings, whose front door was guarded by two sentries.

“Ah yes, I imagine you know some of these people,” Brother Dimitrios said.

I nodded, examining the grim, familiar faces. “Cobb—she worked in the kitchen. Made the salads. The tall guy, Stretch, could repair anything mechanical. Yeah, I know them.”

“Good,” Dimitrios said. “They will be happy to see you. They are going through the welcoming process.”

“In chains?” Aly said.

“Well, they were hostile when we found them,” Dimitrios said. “They were among a much larger band of escapees near Mount Onyx.”

“What happened to the others?” I asked.

His smile sent a shot of ice up my spine. “Let's just say these are the lucky ones.”

I
WATCHED THE
prisoners being led into the distant building, keeping an eye out for Fiddle's ponytail. I didn't see it. They all looked like their hair had been cut by a lawn mower. I didn't see anyone who resembled him or Nirvana at all.

I was afraid to ask Brother Dimitrios if those two were among the “others.”

At the moment, I couldn't ask Dimitrios anything anyway. He was in deep conversation with the woman who'd met him outside the door. She towered over him, looking down a long, bumpy nose, and as she spoke, her silver-black ponytail seemed to wag excitedly. She was yapping away in clipped Greek sentences and gesturing toward us with a bony, olive-green finger.

“Margaret Hamilton,” Aly said.

“You know her name?” I said.

“That's the name of the actress who played the Wicked Witch of the West in the
Wizard of Oz
movie,” Aly said. “She looks just like her.”

The woman looked at us and flashed a snaggletoothed grin. “Cue the flying monkeys,” I murmured.

“Jack, this is Almira Gulch,” Dimitrios said. “She will be turning you into a newt and eating you for lunch.”

No, he didn't actually say that. What he actually said was, “Children, this is Mrs. Petaloude. She is in charge of recruit training. We have a bit of an emergency, alas, so I will be turning you over to one of my associates. Just stay here for a few moments, will you?”

“Wait,
training
?” I said. “Training for what?”

But they were already walking toward a Jeep, with Mrs. Petaloude bending his ear about something.

“Jack, who has the Loculi?” Aly whispered.

“Mustafa,” I said.

“One more thing to worry about. I wish your dad hadn't sent them to us.” Aly groaned, shaking her head. “I'm thinking about that shard, too. We should rotate it, each of us taking it for a while. To keep ourselves healthy. I'm good for now, and you've been holding it all along. Let's give it to Cass.”

Cass turned toward her blankly, as if he hadn't understood
a word. I was worried about him. Since Torquin's death, he had completely checked out.

I pulled the tiny shard from my wallet and slipped it to him. “Can you keep this safe?”

Cass nodded, slipping the shard into his own wallet. I heard the voice of Brother Yiorgos calling us from the edge of the tarmac. He did not look happy, to say the least. His scowl had deepened and his skin had been darkened by the sun. In the deep crags on his face, you could imagine families of mosquitoes frolicking happily. We hadn't exactly left him on good terms. Somewhere in the jungle near Mount Onyx was a tree tattooed with the back of his head, courtesy of Torquin.

“Follow me,” he called out. “Now.”

“Nice to see you, too,” Aly grumbled.

We walked behind him as he tromped down the thick jungle path. He was wearing a bag slung around his shoulder that slapped against his sides as he walked. I swatted away bugs by the dozen. “At least they could give us repellent,” I grumbled.

“Brother Yiorgos is repellent,” Aly said.

Yiorgos spun around. “I would save up that sense of humor if I were you,” he said. “You will need it.”

As we moved out of the jungle and into the campus clearing, I could see what Brother Yiorgos meant. Nothing was funny about what the Massa had done here. We'd
seen hints of the transformation from the air, but I wasn't prepared for this.