The Trap (The Magnificent 12 2)

It’s possible the guards understood them. But it’s more likely they were just startled to see that they were surrounded.

By elves in lederhosen.

That would startle most people.

“What?” Mack yelled into the phone. “Who is it? I’m kind of busy!”

“Hi, Mack! It’s me, your golem!”

“What?” Mack shrieked.

“I’m looking for the English paper. Do you know where you might have put it? It’s already late, and our teacher—”

“What? What?”

“The English paper—”

“I’m kind of busy right now!” Mack screamed. “It’s in my laptop. The folder marked ‘Useless Stuff.’”

“Thanks! Bye-bye, real Mack.”

The flashlights all swung around to highlight the new threat. Probably seventeen or eighteen—Mack wasn’t really concerned with counting—Tong Elves, each armed with a chubby billy club, formed a menacing semicircle.

“The walking human slime are ours,” the elf leader snarled. “So step aside in the name of the Pale Queen, you sock puppets stuffed with pig filth!”

One of the guards evidently understood this well enough. He translated for his comrades. Suddenly the guards—who had been pretty determined to catch Mack and his friends—found a whole different motivation.

The guards wore green uniforms with white belts that went around their waists and over their right shoulders. They had brass buttons and red epaulets, and the only weapons they had were their flashlights. Mack was pretty sure he was going to witness an elf-on-guard massacre.

But then one of the guards shouted an order. Moving as one, the guards holstered their flashlights, laid their hats carefully aside on the cobblestones, and adopted martial arts stances.

“Kee-yah!”

The guards leaped!

The Tong Elves rushed!

It was kung fu fists versus Tong Elf clubs.

“Cool. They should totally make a game of this,” Stefan said. Then, “Owww. My chest kind of hurts.”

“The nine dragons in Beijing,” Jarrah shouted, to be heard over the sounds of kicks and grunts and kung fu punches. “It wasn’t the hotel. It was this wall!”

“Yeah,” Mack agreed. “But when this fight’s over, we won’t be either place.”

Jarrah stared with amazing concentration, totally ignoring the fight that raged behind her.

“The Magnificent Twelve,” she said.

“Not yet we’re not,” Mack said.

“In Vargran. ‘The Magnificent Twelve’ in Vargran! I remember seeing this at Uluru. It was one of the keys to deciphering the whole alphabet.” And then, she said it. Aloud. In Vargran.

“Eb Magga Ull-tway.”

And then! Nothing!

“That didn’t work,” Jarrah said, sounding a bit surprised. “You try it, Mack.”