The Trap (The Magnificent 12 #2)(47)

Time for a quick decision.

“Follow me!” Mack yelled. And he dived headfirst into the nearest pool. It happened to be one of the two soccer games.

If there was regular water in the pool, it sure didn’t feel like it. In fact, it felt as if he was diving through a giant bubble. Not like it popped but like it kind of slid over his skin like a superthin membrane.

And all at once, there he was at midfield in the middle of a soccer game. Mack, Xiao, Jarrah, Dietmar, and a midget Stefan, all on the trampled grass.

Now, when you hear the words soccer game, maybe you’re thinking about the kind of games you know from Saturday junior leagues all over the country, with girls or boys in bright uniforms sort of indifferently chasing a ball around while coaches yell unheeded advice and parents sit on the sidelines in fold-out chairs secretly checking their BlackBerries.

This wasn’t like that.

In this game the players looked like they’d been constructed out of action figures. And where the parents would normally be sitting, there were something like thirty thousand people in a huge arc of stands.

At the exact instant Mack and his friends appeared, one of the players was taking a shot on goal. All thirty thousand people were on their feet shouting. Also gesticulating and making faces. (It’s almost impossible to shout without also making faces, and once you’ve gone that far, you might as well gesticulate.)

In any case, it was a roar of noise.

Then the player noticed that there were four kids and a little person standing in the middle of the field. His foot missed. The ball flew wide.

The stadium went from frenzied roar to utter silence—silence so profound that Mack could hear his own heartbeat.

Thirty thousand pairs of eyes, totaling 59,999 eyes in all—an old dude up in row 14 had a glass eye, which doesn’t really count—went from staring at the kicker and the goalkeeper to staring at the sudden apparition in midfield.

You could almost hear the eyeballs snap.

TV cameras swung around.

The camera that hung above the field on a wire scooted toward them.

“They’ve spotted us,” Dietmar said.

“I believe you may be right,” Mack said.

The crowd had indeed spotted them. And the crowd was not happy about it. Thirty thousand voices bellowed in outrage. Not astonishment or surprise or disbelief, mind you: outrage. Fury. Hatred. Because while it was definitely unusual for a bunch of kids to suddenly pop up in midfield, the really important thing was that the goal had been missed.

Black-and-white-striped officials ran at them.

Players from both teams ran at them, and they were faster and scarier.

And just as they were closing in, a big hand reached out of midair and grabbed Jarrah. A hand, an arm, and no body. And it was big enough to close its grip right around Jarrah.

Once again the stands fell silent. Because now they were finally seeing something even more important than the match.

The arm and hand began to withdraw into . . . into nothing, really. The hand had reached out of thin air. And it was drawing Jarrah away into thin air.

Dietmar was quickest and closest. He grabbed on to Jarrah’s hand and held on tight. But the hand was still pulling, so Mack grabbed Dietmar, and Xiao grabbed Mack, and Stefan—who was an adorable eighteen inches tall—grabbed Xiao’s ankle, and they all pulled back.

It was tug-of-war with an unseen god, which sounds like it might be the metaphorical title of a sermon, but in this case was a literal description of reality.

Jarrah slipped out of sight, drawn into nothing. But then she reappeared, pulled back.

Suddenly, the soccer players started getting into the act. They didn’t like kids wandering around midfield, but they were even more opposed to giant hands. So they began to pummel the mighty god fingers and pull on Jarrah, and they kept it up until a gigantic wolf’s head poked into view and roared so loudly, with such angry ferocity, that some pretty tough-looking guys lost their grip and ran screaming like little girls.

Only one player managed to hold on as Jarrah, Dietmar, Mack, Xiao, and tiny Stefan were yanked powerfully through the portal, to land in a disorganized heap on the floor of the observatory.

The hand did not belong to Thor as they had expected. It was mighty Odin’s mighty hand. And Odin the mighty was mightily angry.

“I had a three-hundred-mark bet on that match!” Odin raged.

“You mean three thousand euros,” Dietmar corrected him.

Odin blinked. He blinked again. Mack waited for the deathblow. As big and scary as Thor was, there was something about the very angry Odin that spelled out “No one messes with me!” in big, flashing neon letters. Odin looked old and worn down, but he looked like an old and worn-down version of a very scary guy you would not have wanted to meet when he was young and unworn.

In fact, Thor and Fenrir were hanging back and looking a bit nervous. After all, Odin might decide to blame them for this interruption in the match and the loss of his bet. Fenrir was chewing his paw, trying to look nonchalant, and Thor was paying a lot of attention to Mjolnir, which was now a guitar once more and apparently in need of polishing with Thor’s sleeve.

Mack closed his eyes, prepared for death, and thought, Well, it was a good life. Short but good.

But when Mack looked again, he saw Odin’s face transforming slowly from enraged mythological divinity to sheepish, starstruck fan.

Odin actually wiped a nervous hand on his tunic. He extended it to the soccer player, who stood gaping like your goldfish after you accidentally drop it on the carpet.