The Trap (The Magnificent 12 #2)(22)

“Are they shooting at us with cans of Mountain Dew?” Stefan asked.

“Sizzle guns,” Xiao said grimly. “The pellets are like tiny magnets. They try to come together, and they put out a bubbly acid to eat anything that gets in the way. Imagine a hundred of them hitting you!”

Imagining this helped Mack and the others run faster. But not as fast as the Skirrit, who were now ahead of them on the far bank and would easily cut them off where the river entered the wall.

“Can you all swim?” Xiao cried. Then added, “Underwater?”

No one answered.

The Skirrit were standing still now, blocking the way, aiming their sizzle guns.

Xiao leaped and broke the river surface with a perfect knifelike dive. Jarrah was right behind her, equally athletic.

Stefan and Mack hit the water together—more cannonball than Olympic racing dive.

Mack swallowed a little water, fought down the desperate urge to cough, opened his eyes, and saw three sets of shoes kicking away from him.

He leveled off, tried not to think about drowning, and swam hard after them through lovely aquamarine water.

Turning slightly, Mack saw refracted Skirrit faces peering down into the water.

He kept kicking.

Ahead was darkness like a wall. He saw Stefan’s shoes kicking. He followed.

Through the water he heard churning and someone shouting and, from farther away now, the furious cries of the Skirrit.

He swam until his lungs burned and his muscles grew weak from lack of oxygen and his brain swirled. Then, when he had no other choice, he surfaced and sucked air like it was the last breath he would ever take.

Stefan’s strong hands grabbed his wet shirt and his belt and hauled him onto a dry surface. He coughed up river water, exhausted. But at least there were no Skirrit.

What there was, was a very odd boat.

Xiao was speaking respectfully to the “boat.” And of course the boat was answering her with equally grave politeness.

Mack hung his head down between his knees.

“Just like, five minutes of normal. Just five minutes. That would be great.”

Stefan laughed happily. “Dude, we have moved out of normal. We live in cuh-razeee now!”





Chapter Sixteen



The boat—the barge, as Huang Long had called it; the royal barge, in fact—was not quite what Mack had expected. For one thing, it was alive.

Above the water it looked kind of like a boat. It had sides that might be wood or woodlike. It had a deck that was hard and firm underfoot. It had a tall mast, and that’s where things began to look weird. The mast was very obviously not a tree trunk but a spur of white bone, slightly bowed and tapering.

Below the waterline Mack could glimpse the rest of the barge. It looked a bit like a whale, very large, tinged blue. Toward the stern was not one set of flukes but three vertical tails, like a shark’s tail. Times three.

And at the front was a long, sinewy neck ending in a head and face like a very large pug dog.

“We’ll need seats, Barge,” Xiao said to the pug face.

“Ah! Then we’ll be moving at speed?”

“Yes. Full speed.”

The pug face grinned. “Ah, yes!”

The deck, which had seemed almost like wood, was revealed as living flesh as it rippled and formed rudimentary benches.

“Sit. Hold on tight,” Xiao commanded.

Mack took the seat beside Xiao.

“Ready,” Xiao said, and before the last syllable had stopped reverberating through the air, the barge launched. Like a roller coaster out of a power chute.

A huge bow wave went up, forming walls of spray to their right and left. The sail filled with wind, despite the fact that there was no wind, and the barge swooshed away like a rocket.

Mack was slammed against his seat. Xiao grinned at him. “The barge never gets to go full speed. He lives for this.”

They rocketed down the tunnel, water drenching the rock sides and roof. After a while an area opened up on the right, a sort of diorama. It blew by in a flash, and they were back in the gloomy tunnel.

“What was that?”

Xiao shrugged. “Like a museum: great moments in history. Normally we’d be going slower and we could enjoy the displays. They keep the trip from getting too boring.”

“Where are we going?” Jarrah asked. She looked as happy as the pug head, whose tongue was hanging out about three feet, like a dog on a car ride.

“To the wall,” Xiao said. “There we can get a flight to our next stop.”

“What’s our next stop?” Jarrah asked.

Xiao looked puzzled. “Don’t you know?”

“We don’t exactly have a map,” Mack said.

“What do you have?”

“Some old dude who talks to us from bathroom fixtures,” Mack said.

Xiao stared at him. Blinked. Blinked again.

“Yeah,” Mack said, “that’s what we think of it, too.” He shrugged. “Look, I’m sure Grimluk would lay it all out for us if he could. But the dude’s three thousand years old, and I think he’s doing the best he can. And the bad guys kind of keep the pressure on us, you know? When we were back at school just finding out about this, or at Uluru, or when we were talking to your dad . . . I mean, it’s not like we ever get a lot of downtime to sit around and plan things out. We have thirty-four days, and the Pale Queen is trying hard to make sure we don’t even have one day.”