The Trap (The Magnificent 12 #2)(16)

So his career took an unexpected turn. Rather than being promoted along the path from thug to marauder to pillager—a path that might eventually have led to a comfortable life as a crime boss—Paddy was guided onto a lonelier path.

This path led from thug to backstabber to assassin.

No one really liked assassins. One of their chief jobs was to take out fellow Nafia members who were too soft, or squealed to the cops, or asked too many questions, or looked funny.

Paddy acted like he didn’t care. “Hey, I never wanted a nice suburban home in New Jersey with a blond wife and two difficult kids. I don’t even like onion rings.”

No one knew what that last remark meant, but who was going to question him? Paddy had become a dangerous guy.

It was about this time that an event occurred that altered the course of Paddy’s life: the local boss of the Black Hand invited him to join him at his country club for a round of golf.

This gentleman was known as Six Toes Ricotta.

Their golf game changed Paddy’s life forever.





Chapter Eleven



Down into the dark they stumbled, tripping on steep steps. Stefan sagged in Mack’s and Jarrah’s arms and barely motored his feet forward.

Mack glanced back and saw the nine-dragon wall sliding back up with barely a sound. An astonished guard gaped down at him, shook his head like it was all a dream, and chopped at an elf.

Then, total darkness.

The air smelled of mold and dust and rotten eggs.

Mack shifted his grip on Stefan. He held up his phone, trying to see with the dim light. It didn’t really work; the space was too big. Which was bad, because right then Mack started thinking about his very least favorite story: “The Cask of Amontillado,” in which a guy gets walled up in a basement.

Mack whimpered.

Then, a voice!

“Is that the new iPhone, or the earlier model?”

A girl’s voice. And she seemed to actually expect an answer.

“I . . . I’m not sure,” Mack admitted.

A match flared. Mack had an impression of a heart-shaped face and almond eyes and black hair.

The match burned. It lit a torch. The torch was then carried to the wall, where another torch lit and then, like dominoes falling, the flame went flying from torch to torch off into the distance.

“Xiao Long,” the girl said. “You may call me Xiao.”

She was dressed in a tight-fitting, full-length, gold-embroidered turquoise silk dress.

“I’m Mack,” Mack said. “This is Jarrah. And Stefan. Who needs a doctor.”

“I can see that.”

“How can we get out of here and find a hospital?”

Xiao looked at him for what felt like a very long time. Then she said, “Ah.” As though she just got something. As though she didn’t like what she had just realized.

“Come with me,” Xiao said. “I will take you to my parents.”

“Is one of them a doctor?”

Xiao had already turned away to lead them. She hesitated. “They are both . . . well, they will be helpful. Or fatal.”

Mack was pretty sure he hadn’t heard that last word quite right. Because obviously, why would she be saying her parents could be fatal?

They walked down a long hallway. It was quite wide, as wide as the nine-dragon wall had been. It headed downhill at a steep angle. At the end of the hallway were three enormous elevators. They didn’t have doors; they were just platforms suspended on cables as thick as Stefan’s bicep.

There were no buttons to push. Once they were all aboard the platform, it dropped. Slowly at first. Then faster, faster, so fast that the shaft walls were a blur of stone and rock.

The elevator slowed, stopped, and Xiao led the way off the platform. Now they faced a set of massive steel doors decorated with what had to be real gold filigree. You could drive a moving van through those doors. And you could make a million wedding rings out of the swirling gold framing.

As Xiao approached, the doors swung silently inward onto bright light and lush color and a smell of flowers.

Mack, Stefan, and Jarrah reached the threshold and froze. They were standing at the top of a long descending ramp that extended for what had to be two football fields in length.

It led down to a cavern so vast that at first Mack could not believe it was underground. It was impossibly big. Big like the Grand Canyon. Big. Really big. In fact, you could have sawed a giant line around the Forbidden City and dropped the whole thing crashing down into this cavern and have room left over for a couple of major malls.

Mack, his jaw open, counted nine massive palaces, each done up in red and azure and gold and green. Each palace had acres and acres of grass lawn and cute, well-trimmed trees. A river meandered through it all, like a sparkling liquid road. Light-colored bricks bordered the river and occasionally spread out to form tree-shaded plazas.

There were no other roads or pathways. No cars. No bikes. No people, as far as Mack could tell.

The sky—the roof of this ridiculously large cave—was painted blue, and decorated with what had to be millions of paintings of people and animals and mountains and dragons. Like the Sistine Chapel but so big the entire Sistine Chapel ceiling would have been one drawing.

From the very center of the blue ceiling hung a steel pot so huge that blue whales could have floated around inside. But the pot-in-the-sky did not contain water; it contained light. It shone through artful cutouts and reflected onto the ceiling. An artificial sun.