The Call (The Magnificent 12 1)

But they were not alone. From every side now came the living things of the Outback. Camels, wallabies, kangaroos—all flying along the ground so much faster than nature could make them move.

Karri drove through a shrieking madness of storm and beast, the entire Outback transformed by Risky’s spell into a hammer blow that would crush the buggy and all within it.

A dingo leaped, then flew! It hit Karri from the side, right through the open window.

The buggy lurched. Karri screamed. The dingo fell into the backseat, snarling and snapping on Mack’s lap.

He had time only to punch it, helplessly, before the buggy tilted and tipped and went rolling over and over. Sand and rock everywhere. The seat backs and ceiling and headrests battered Mack like he’d been tossed into a mixer set on “knead.”

“Aaaahhh!” he cried.

Stefan was rolling loose inside the spinning car, knees and head and elbows punishing Mack.

Suddenly the buggy came to a stop upside down.

Mack heard crying, moaning. Stefan was stirring. The dingo squirmed. Mack tried to figure out where up was. In the front Karri was silent, still, resting upside down on the ceiling of the buggy. Her neck was at a terrible angle.

Jarrah cried, “Mum! Mum! Wake up!”

Mack pushed his way through the open window, fighting Stefan’s weight. He crawled out onto the sand, still warm from the day’s heat. His mouth was full of blood. His nose had been smashed earlier by the Tong Elf’s club, but his arms and legs all seemed to still be working.

He rose on shaky legs to find himself standing inside a whirling maelstrom, like the calm eye of a hurricane.

The storm whipped around. The beasts waited, panting, staring wildly, doing the bidding of the evil girl who walked forward with an arrogant swagger.

“I’ll bet you’re ruing the day you ever listened to that old fraud Grimluk,” Risky said.

“Kind of,” Mack admitted.

Risky nodded. “Grimluk and his twelve were just a temporary impediment. This world belongs to my mother. And to me.” She grinned her fabulous this-is-what-orthodontia-can-do-for-you smile. Then she threw back her head and laughed. “Mine! All of it, mine!”

Mack couldn’t think of much to say about that, but he’d had some experience in defying bullies. “You know, there are medications that can help people like you.”

“There are no people like me,” Risky said.

“You’re a thug, a punk,” Mack said. “A murdering creep with deep mental problems. Sorry, but there are lots of people like you. Unfortunately.”

“Ah, defiance. That’s good: it makes it more fun. Grimluk was defiant, too. In fact…” She looked around, like she was trying to remember something. “Yes, it was very near this spot. No, no, wait: it was on the other side of Uluru. I remember now. Yes, that’s where I killed Grimluk’s little girlfriend, the next-to-last of the so-called Magnifica. I forget her name. I killed her, and I could see the way it broke Grimluk’s spirit. I watched the hope die in him. Unfortunately he was able to escape. And now”—she sighed theatrically—“he’s still making trouble, all these years later.”

“Looks like he was tougher than you thought,” Mack said. “Maybe you didn’t quite break his spirit.”

Risky’s smile turned steely. “It’s a very bad idea to fight me. You do realize I’ve survived for ten thousand years, don’t you? I know that to you I’m just the most beautiful girl you’ve eve

r seen, but—”

“No, you’re not,” Mack blurted.

The smile disappeared. “You’re a very bad liar, Mack. I see the truth. It’s always been the truth: no male can resist me.”

She came closer. And somehow, despite the howling wind, he could hear her whisper.

“Young or old, it doesn’t matter,” Risky said. “They all die the same way: screaming in pain. I hold the keys to the Thirteenth Pair, Mack: Life…and Death.”

She was so close now that Mack could smell her and yes, yes, the smell of her, the colors of her hair, the slow way she blinked and then revealed again her startling green eyes, it all reached inside of him.

Took him.

“And yet, and yet…even as their eyes fail, and their breathing stops and their minds invent visions of welcoming lights; even as death steals their souls; even then, even as the final terror seizes them and they experience the awful silence of their own hearts, they love me.”