Parker followed the path of the dagger as it went up and then came down. He managed to spread his legs just enough so that when the dagger landed tip-down, it clanged off the marble floor instead of imbedding itself in Parker’s thigh or someplace even worse.
The Path member was out cold. Parker and Theo looked to Reese, amazed.
“Brazilian jujitsu,” she said with a shrug. “My mom made me take a class at the Y.”
36
PARKER, REESE, AND THEO FOUND themselves walking down a desolate country road. It was a beautiful night. The stars were out, and there was a warm breeze blowing. The only noise came from crickets. The whole thing would have been magical, really, if they were back in New Hampshire.
But they weren’t.
“Okay,” said Reese, shifting Professor Ellison’s bag on her arm. “So. We don’t have any money, none of us speaks the language, and we have no way to get home. All true. All very real problems. I’m not saying they don’t exist. But still. How many American kids even get to come to Lithuania?”
Or Latvia, she thought. She wasn’t a hundred percent sure exactly where they were at the moment.
“And not just the tourist sites, either!”
Her attempt to lighten the mood was doomed from the start. They had been walking for hours, and the tension between Theo and Parker was ready to boil over. Parker planted himself in the middle of the road and exploded at his cousin.
“What were you thinking?” he screamed. “Why would you tell them anything? They’re trying to enslave the whole human race. Do you really think you can trust them? I mean, we all know that you aren’t exactly straight-A material, but are you really that stupid?”
“Parker...” Reese said.
“Yeah, well,” said Theo, “I was trying to save all of our lives.”
“You betrayed us! You handed the professor to the Path! And plus, also, now they have however-many lamps she had stashed away. Do you realize you might have doomed the whole world?”
Theo stared into his cousin’s eyes for a moment. Then, without warning, he hurled himself at Parker and tackled him to the ground. Reese jumped back as the two boys wrestled in the middle of the road.
“Me? Me? I’m the one that doomed the whole world? What about you?”
“Parker! Theo! Stop it!” Reese tried to break them up, but they ignored her.
“What about me?” said Parker.
“It’s your fault Fon-Rahm got captured!” Theo was on top of Parker, as angry as he had ever been in his life. “He warned you! He said to be careful, to plan it all out. But no. That’s not good enough for Parker Quarry. Why listen to anybody else? There’s no fun in that! You have to make all the decisions. It always has to be about you! You don’t care about anybody but yourself. It’s no wonder your own mother can’t stand to be around you!”
Everything came to a halt. Parker stopped fighting back and Theo climbed off him. Parker stayed on his back and looked at the moon.
“You’re right,” he said.
Theo shook his head and threw up his hands. “I’m sorry, Parker. About what I said about your mother. That was...I didn’t mean that.”
“Well, you’re right about the other stuff. Will you help me up, please? Theo?” Theo just glared at him. “Fine.” Parker pulled himself up from the road and checked his hands for scrapes. “I should have listened to you and I should have listened to Fon-Rahm. I got cocky. I do that sometimes. I can’t do anything about any of that now except apologize and admit I was wrong, and I do. I apologize. I admit I was wrong.”
Reese and Theo waited. It was the first time either of them had been on the end of a sincere apology from Parker.
“You’re right. It is my fault that Fon-Rahm was captured, and it’s going to be up to me, or, well, to us, to get him back.”
“And how exactly do you plan on doing that?” asked Theo.
“I’m open to ideas.”
Reese thought for a moment.
“We have the map we got off the Path,” she said. “We have the professor’s bag and all of her magic talismans. We have a dagger. We have maybe one or two hours before the sun comes up.”
“Right,” Parker said. “What we need is some way to intercept the Path before they get to the mine in Belarus.”
“Come on, Parker. There’s no way we can do that,” said Theo.
Parker pointed down the road at a barely manned government roadblock. There was a swing-arm wooden traffic gate painted in fading orange and white. A uniformed guard was sleeping in a chair in what could charitably be called a shack. Parked well behind it was a beaten-down old military truck with a canvas roof.
“It would be a lot easier if we had some kind of a vehicle,” Parker said.
37
“SOME GANGBANGERS TAUGHT ME HOW to do this in LA,” Parker said as he crawled under the truck’s dashboard. After a solid four minutes of bending wires with nothing to show for it besides bent wire, Parker came up again.
“Okay,” he said. “So I didn’t know any gangbangers in LA.”
Theo rolled his eyes. “Yeah. I kinda figured.”
They were being as quiet as they could be, but everything seemed to make noise. The door of the truck creaked. The seat groaned. Theo stood outside the truck, watching Parker and occasionally glancing over to make sure the guard was still asleep in his shack. Theo might as well have relaxed. Nothing ever happened at this checkpoint, and the guard had gotten used to a six-hour nap every night.
“Excuse me,” said Reese. Parker moved over so that she could slide under the steering wheel. After a few seconds of tinkering, the truck’s engine fired with an impatient rumble.
Parker said, “Let me guess. You took a class at the Y.”
“Nope.” Reese grinned. “Saw it in a Jason Statham movie.”
Parker slid her over and got behind the wheel. He unfolded the map he stole from the Path. Their route was drawn in red pen, and their destination marked with an X.
“All right. So, here’s Belarus, and here’s us,” Parker said. “As far as I can tell, these lines in black are railroads. The Path are planning on taking a train to the mine. If we can cut them off before they get on board, we can steal Fon-Rahm back. We’ll have to hurry.”
He shut his door. Reese looked for a seat belt, but there wasn’t one. She moved over to make room for Theo. Instead of getting into the truck, however, Theo started walking.
“Theo? Where are you going?” asked Parker.
“I’m going home.” Theo stopped and turned back to his cousin. “I’m sorry. This stuff is just...It’s too much for me.”
Parker said, “How are you going to get home? We don’t even know...”
“I’ll find a phone. Somebody will have a computer. I’ll go to the police. I’ll stop at a house. Somebody will help me.”
“We can’t let you go out there alone!” said Reese.
“Somebody has to save Fon-Rahm. It just can’t be me,” Theo said. “It’ll work out. I’ll be okay. Really. I’ll be okay.”
The two cousins looked at each other for a moment.
Theo said, “So, good luck, I guess. I’ll see you when you get back. I’ll save you some Thanksgiving turkey.”
“Yeah,” said Parker. “We’ll see you then.”
Parker put the big truck in gear, gave it some gas, and looped around the guard shack. He tore through the swing arm over the road, startling the guard awake. The guard ran after the truck, screaming in Russian. Parker watched in his rearview mirror as Theo walked away from the roadblock.
“Good luck to you, too,” Parker said quietly. He knew he had lost the best friend he had.
38
REESE NAVIGATED WHILE PARKER DROVE.
“I think we’re okay,” she said, examining the map. “The problem is that this map is in Russian.”
“I’m sort of surprised you can’t read Russian,” said Parker.
“Well, technically, I guess, you don’t read Russian, you read Cyrillic. It’s
an alphabet that dates back to...” Reese knew she was giving Parker more information than he needed, so she stopped. “Anyway, I can’t read it.”
Parker grinned. “I knew I could find something you couldn’t do if I hung out with you long enough.”
Reese found herself blushing. The transmission made a horrible grinding sound as Parker shifted gears.
“Parker? Is something wrong with the truck?”
“It’s not the truck. Fon-Rahm’s spell is wearing off. Pretty soon I won’t remember how to drive.”
Reese was able to find the train yard, and Parker managed to drive there. They idled on a hill, looking down at the tracks, and they watched as men walked around the back end of an idling freight train.
“Are you sure we’re in the right place?” asked Parker, absently playing with the dagger he had taken off the goon in the museum.
“They circled it on the map.”
“I don’t see them. Do you see them?”
“No, but the train’s still here. Maybe they just haven’t shown up yet.” Reese put her feet on the dashboard, trying to get comfortable. Then she put them down again. “I don’t know why you and Theo have to argue all the time,” she said. “I would kill to have a cousin or a sister, somebody that has to hang out with me. I feel like I don’t have anything in common with any of the girls at school. I guess maybe I’m not the easiest person to be friends with.”
Parker seemed genuinely surprised. “Really? I think you’re great. You’re smart, you’re cool. You’re happy all the time. You’re always excited by things. You’re up for adventure.”
Reese smiled to herself.
“If I was a girl, I would absolutely want to be your friend,” said Parker.
Reese’s face fell.
“There!” Parker sat up. Three Path members were climbing out of a Mercedes sedan. One of them carried Fon-Rahm’s lamp. They all had guns.
“How are we supposed to get it back?” asked Reese.
Parker groped around the truck, never taking his eyes off the lamp. He came up with a dull green hat that he plopped on Reese’s head and a ratty scarf that he wrapped around his own face.
“I’m going to drive down there and park right next to their car. You’re going to sneak up next to the guy with the lamp and brain him with this.” Parker pulled a massive wrench out from underneath the seat and put it next it to Reese.
“This,” Reese said, “is a terrible plan.”
“There are only three of them, and you know karate!”
“They have guns, Parker.”
“We’ll be out of there before they even know what happened! Just hit the guy and grab the lamp. I’ll have the truck running right next to you.”
Reese picked up the wrench. It was so heavy she could barely lift it.
Parker said, “Okay. I’m just going to creep down there real slow. They’ll think we’re army guys looking for something on the train. Are you ready?”
“No. I’m not doing this.”
“Well, do you have any other ideas?” “Yeah, my idea is we don’t do your plan.”
Parker moved around in his seat and accidentally hit the gearshift. The truck lurched forward and started to roll toward the train tracks.
“Uh-oh,” he said, grinding the gears.
“Parker, stop the truck!”
“I’m trying! I don’t know how to drive!”
The truck shot down the hill. The Path members dove out of the way right before Parker creamed the truck directly into the Mercedes. When they looked up from the crash, Parker and Reese found themselves once again surrounded by men with guns.
“I told you this was a terrible plan,” said Reese.
One of the Path members ordered the others to board the train with the lamp. As they ran off, the leader grabbed Professor Ellison’s bag from Reese and pushed Reese and Parker against a wall.
“Parker, I’m scared,” said Reese. She was trembling.
The Path member checked his rifle.
Parker was in shock. Everything had gone so wrong, so fast. “This was all supposed to be fun. I just assumed it would all work out. I’m so sorry I dragged you into this, Reese. I really thought we could pull it off.”
Parker wished that Fon-Rahm was there to save them, but he wasn’t.
Reese took Parker’s hand.
“Good-bye, Parker.”
The Path member raised his rifle and took aim.
39
JUST AS THE PATH MEMBER pulled his trigger, the barrel of his gun bent upward, as if being pulled by an invisible force. The minion looked at it, bewildered. It was a good gun. Very reliable. The barrel had never turned to rubber before.
He heard a voice say, “Hey, moron,” and he turned around just in time for Theo to crack him in the face with the giant wrench from the truck.
“That’s my cousin,” Theo said.
Reese was pretty happy to see him. “Theo! How did you...”
Theo shook his head and pointed to his left. Maksimilian was there, his hands raised to the sky. He was the one who cast the spell that saved them.
“I’m a little rusty,” Maks admitted, “but I still got it.” Then he let out a burp.
“Gross,” said Reese.
“The train!” said Parker. The train was moving, with the Path members and Fon-Rahm’s lamp on board. Parker snatched Professor Ellison’s bag off the ground and took off after it.
“Parker? Where are you going?” said Theo.
Parker was on the move. He thought he might be able to catch the train, but it was picking up speed and moving away from him fast. Parker slung the bag over his shoulder as he ran. He reached for the railing on the back of the train. He missed. He reached again and this time got hold of the railing by his fingertips. He tripped and was dragged along for a moment, but he managed to find his footing and, finally, pull himself on board the train. He tried the door that led into the train’s last car. In his first burst of good luck all day, Parker found that it was unlocked.
40
THE TRAIN WAS OLD AND NOISY, and it pitched from side to side as it sped down the tracks. Parker found himself in a freight car loaded with boxes and equipment piled high and strapped in place. He grabbed what he could to steady himself, and made his way carefully and quietly deeper into the train.
When he heard voices, Parker stopped and ducked behind a stack of crates. He peeked out. Two Path members were sitting on some gear, eating sandwiches and drinking coffee out of paper cups. One of the men had his hand on the glowing metal lamp.
Parker hunted through Professor Ellison’s bag. He came up with a jeweled snowflake, which he thought didn’t really fit the occasion, and a small porcelain ballerina doll, which he rejected as too girly. Then he found an amulet made of a piece of clear amber attached to a soft golden chain. He held the jewel up to the light. Inside the amber was a tiny, fossilized spider, trapped since prehistoric times in tree sap that later hardened into a gemstone. Parker felt a power flowing through the talisman. He knew instinctively that he didn’t need any fancy spell to make the thing work. He just needed to point it and believe.
Parker aimed the amulet at the Path members. He felt the thing start to heat up. Before it could do whatever it was going to do, however, the train hit a stretch of uneven track. The car bumped and bounced, and the jewel went flying out of Parker’s hand. It landed in the middle of the car, right where anybody could see it. Anybody, like, say, the thugs armed with machine guns seven feet away.
Parker froze, but the minions kept on eating. They didn’t see it. One of them wadded up his coffee cup and threw it to the side. Then he got up and made his way to the front of the car. He slid open the car’s huge side door, unzipped his pants, and started to, as Parker’s dad would have said, make some yellow snow.
This was Parker’s best shot. He grabbed the dagger from his waistband and cut the straps holding the pile of crates in place. Then he scratched the crates with the knife, making an unpleasant sound. The man w
ith the lamp didn’t hear it. Parker did it again, louder this time. The Path member grabbed his gun and got up to investigate. Parker waited for him to get close, and then he shoved. The crates fell on top of the minion, knocking him silly.
Parker was pleased with himself. All he had to do now was grab the lamp and set Fon-Rahm free. The second he reached for it, though, the other Path member came storming back, his gun at the ready. Parker had overestimated the amount of coffee the guy drank and how long it would take him to pee.
Parker pulled back his hand and threw himself behind a huge crate just as the goon started blasting with his machine gun. The box was marked in Russian and had a series of holes near the top. It smelled bad, too, but Parker didn’t have time to complain. Bullets ripped through the car and knocked the lock off the big crate.
The lamp was just sitting there, right in the open. It was Parker’s only chance. He waited for the Path member’s ammo to run out. Then, when the minion stopped to reload, Parker jumped out and made a desperate grab at the lamp.
He came up about a foot short. The lamp was out of Parker’s reach when the thug clicked the new magazine into place. Parker looked up to meet his doom, but a noise from the crate behind Parker startled him and the Path member. It was a growl, or maybe a roar. The gunman lowered his weapon and leaned forward, peering quizzically at the crate. Then the crate burst open and a polar bear meant for a circus in Poland, and upset at being woken from a deep sleep, leaped at the Path member. The goon screamed and tried to fight the bear off, but it was no use.
When the bear was through with the Path member, it turned to Parker. It didn’t know what the metal container in Parker’s hands was, and it didn’t care. It had faced weapons before. Parker twisted the thing, and the bear found himself thrown back by a sudden explosion of smoke and lightning that cut the train car in half.
When the fog cleared, Fon-Rahm and Parker found themselves in the wreckage of what was once a train car. They were stopped on the tracks while the rest of the train chugged on, towing the other half of the freight car in a trail of sparks. The polar bear had had enough of people and lightning and trains. It was out of the car and running from the tracks on its way to a new life.
Rebels of the Lamp, Book 1 Page 15