The Curse of the King (8 page)

“C
ASS, 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!”

I
F
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 outer 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.