The Trap (The Magnificent 12 #2)(26)

“I don’t think we’re safe in here,” Stefan said.

The tower wasn’t that big, just as wide as the wall itself and extending up for maybe another fifty feet. It was brick and had been designed to be completely impervious. To arrows.

zzzz-ZZZZZ-zzzz-ZZZZZ

It was a whine like a fingernail scraping a single string on an electric guitar. Mack could see Risky through the arched, doorless opening. Her wings beat the air so fast they became nothing but a blur.

You could say she was a really big dragonfly, except that her face wasn’t a dragonfly’s face. It was still Risky, but all distended and distorted, as if someone had tried to stretch her face over a head ten sizes too big. Her lips were smeared into a wide Joker grin. The smile revealed curved, scimitar teeth that could be made of steel.

The six legs were no longer even slightly human. But they weren’t quite insect, either. More like long, thin lobster claws.

“Aaah ahha yaarrgh!” the three of them said, more or less in unison.

“We need some Vargran!” Mack cried.

“Like what?” Jarrah yelled.

“Huh,” Stefan said. “It’s kind of cool the way she can do that.”

“She’s going to eat us!” Mack yelled at Stefan.

The dragonfly creature rose from the wall. For a few seconds Mack couldn’t see her. But the drone sound came closer and louder, so loud he could hardly hear his own rasping breath.

She landed with a surprisingly small thump atop the tower. It barely shook the bricks.

She had managed what the swelling Lepercons could not do: she’d kept her weight in proportion. That, Mack reflected, was the key to getting really big: you didn’t want the weight going up proportionally.

But that didn’t mean Risky wasn’t strong. Mack heard a grinding, tearing noise and saw bricks falling outside. Risky was taking the tower apart, brick by brick.

There were a lot of bricks in the tower.

But not enough.

A beam of sunlight shone through a hole in the high, domed ceiling. One big, rainbow-shiny, multifaceted eye stared down at them.

“I can hear your little hearts beating,” Risky said. “Nothing’s tastier than a fresh, frightened heart. Did you know it will keep beating for a while after I tear it from your chest, Mack? I’ll feel it fluttering in my stomach.”

“Vargran! We need some like, like, like right now!”

“I-I-I-I,” Jarrah cried. “I can’t think!”

Bricks fell down through the hole and landed around them.

Stefan snatched one up and hurled it at the big eyeball. It missed.

With a ripping sound, the roof of the tower tore free. It lifted like a hinged lid. Then it collapsed and fell down the outside of the tower.

The tower was now a convertible with the top down.

Nothing was left to stop Risky. Nothing left but for her to decide who to eat first.

But suddenly Risky hesitated. Mack could see her creepy half-human, half-insect head snap up. It’s hard to see fear in a face that . . . unusual . . . but Mack definitely heard concern in her voice.

“It can’t be,” Risky said. “I killed you a millennium ago!”

The biggest sound Mack had ever heard answered back. A voice so astounding that it was hard even to parse out the words. Which were:

“So long as the four winds blow, I live! I am Shen LOOOONG! And . . . I LIIIIIVE!”





Chapter Nineteen



When his insides had stopped quivering and his bones had stopped rattling from the sound, Mack turned and looked through the far door of the tower.

He was used to seeing dragons now. Well, kind of used to it. But this didn’t look like the other dragons.

Shen Long had a face that seemed almost human. Maybe half dragon, half human. And at first he looked kind of comical, because he was less like a huge snake and more like a huge snake that had swallowed one of those domed telescope observatories.

His chest and stomach were bulbous, and vast.

He was sucking in air as if he was trying to get it all for himself. It was like standing in the surf when a wave recedes.

Xiao suddenly appeared and zoomed into the tower, knocking Mack flat in her hurry. “Down!” she yelled. “Down and hold on for dear life!”

Mack was already down. Stefan grabbed Jarrah and knocked her flat. The three of them were facedown, and Xiao was already zooming away when Shen Long finished filling his lungs.

Then, Shen Long exhaled.

The top three-quarters of the tower might as well have been a kid’s papier-maché art project. The hurricane, the tornado of wind, blew it away in a single piece.

Mack looked up in time to see Risky flying backward through the air. Not quite as fast as a bullet, maybe, but very fast.

She flew, helpless, in a maelstrom of bricks and chunks of tower and mismatched bits of crenellation.

She hit the next tower, smashed through it, hit the top of the wall beyond, rolled along the crenellations, came loose, flew some more, hit the top of a mountain, took the top of the mountain with her, and disappeared from view.

The hurricane ended as suddenly as it had begun.

Shen Long’s stomach was still big. But not as big.

Xiao swept down from the sky and landed on his shoulder. “Uncle! Thanks!”

“Anything for my favorite niece,” Shen Long said in a more subdued voice. “Besides, I can’t stand that princess. She’s as rotten as her mother.”