The Call (The Magnificent 12 1)

Mack swallowed. He was frozen. Unable to move. Unable to look away.

“Have you ever been kissed, Mack?” she asked. “No. I see that you have not. What a pity.”

She touched him then, her hand on his cheek, cradling his face. “To die so very young. To die without ever being kissed.”

And yes, he wanted her to kiss him. He wanted it more than he had ever wanted anything ever or could ever imagine wanting anything ever—and he was just twelve years old, so really kissing girls had not moved to the top of his agenda.

And yet…

Mack was vaguely aware of Karri Major stirring, waking. And of Jarrah and Stefan hauling her out of the far side of the buggy.

Risky drew him to her, unresisting. Her lips parted just slightly. She tilted her head. Her lips were so close.

A voice from a million miles away yelled, “Dude. No! Noooo!” Stefan’s voice. Mack could barely hear.

From the corner of his eye Mack saw Jarrah rushing. She had something in her hand: a shovel. But she was moving in slow motion.

To his muted amazement she didn’t rush toward Risky. Instead she launched herself at Stefan, hit him, carried him down to the ground.

He felt Risky’s breath on his lips. He knew he would die.

Then, millimeters from her deadly kiss, Mack put his arms around her, held her close, and in a loud, clear voice cried, “E-ma edras!”

A small nuclear weapon went off.

Mack’s body became light. And heat. Approximately 27,000,000 degrees Fahrenheit—the temperature of the sun’s core.

Mack didn’t feel it, didn’t really even see it. It wasn’t outside of him, it was him. The Vargran spell had turned him into a creature of blinding light and terrifying heat.

Risky’s pale, soft skin and her lush red hair burst into flames.

The light lasted only a split second, but in that split second the desert was bright daylight.

Bushes caught fire.

The sand beneath Mack’s feet melted to glass.

The animals nearest were incinerated. The rest turned and ran, blinded, panicked.

The gas tank of the buggy exploded.

But mostly, Risky burned. She staggered back, a living torch.

The storm ended in a shower of falling sand.

Risky screamed in pain but much more in rage.

She pointed a flaming, crisping hand at Mack. “You!” she screamed. “You!”

And then, Princess Ereskigal became a pillar of black, oily smoke. Her body was gone and in its place a thing of twisting, writhing smoke, and within that smoke a seething mass of shiny black insects.

Suddenly she was gone.

Gone.

“Yeah,” Mack said as the killing light died out, “I think I’ll do Darkness and Light.”

* * *