The Trap (The Magnificent 12 2)

There were no buttons to push. Once they were all aboard the platform, it dropped. Slowly at first. Then faster, faster, so fast that the shaft walls were a blur of stone and rock.

The elevator slowed, stopped, and Xiao led the way off the platform. Now they faced a set of massive steel doors decorated with what had to be real gold filigree. You could drive a moving van through those doors. And you could make a million wedding rings out of the swirling gold framing.

As Xiao approached, the doors swung silently inward onto bright light and lush color and a smell of flowers.

Mack, Stefan, and Jarrah reached the threshold and froze. They were standing at the top of a long descending ramp that extended for what had to be two football fields in length.

It led down to a cavern so vast that at first Mack could not believe it was underground. It was impossibly big. Big like the Grand Canyon. Big. Really big. In fact, you could have sawed a giant line around the Forbidden City and dropped the whole thing crashing down into this cavern and have room left over for a couple of major malls.

Mack, his jaw open, counted nine massive palaces, each done up in red and azure and gold and green. Each palace had acres and acres of grass lawn and cute, well-trimmed trees. A river meandered through it all, like a sparkling liquid road. Light-colored bricks bordered the river and occasionally spread out to form tree-shaded plazas.

There were no other roads or pathways. No cars. No bikes. No people, as far as M

ack could tell.

The sky—the roof of this ridiculously large cave—was painted blue, and decorated with what had to be millions of paintings of people and animals and mountains and dragons. Like the Sistine Chapel but so big the entire Sistine Chapel ceiling would have been one drawing.

From the very center of the blue ceiling hung a steel pot so huge that blue whales could have floated around inside. But the pot-in-the-sky did not contain water; it contained light. It shone through artful cutouts and reflected onto the ceiling. An artificial sun.

“Welcome to Long Xiang,” Xiao said.

Stefan opened his eyes and struggled to focus. “Huh,” he said, and slumped again.

“Crikey,” Jarrah said.

“Whoa,” Mack said.

Xiao stood aside so they could see better. Just then something that looked an awful lot like a very big snake began to emerge from one of the nine palaces. It was hard to judge size from this distance, but it looked about as big around as a redwood tree and as long as four or five city buses end to end.

It was brilliant yellow with scales that flashed in the light of the artificial sun.

It was not a snake. For one thing, it was far too big to be a snake. Plus it had four stubby lizard legs. Each leg ended in five claws.

Its head was almost horselike. But it had two horns that twisted back from its brow, horns that must have been as long as flagpoles. It had a mouth at once fierce and laughing, as if the creature found many things amusing, and then ate those amusing things.

It slithered and squirmed from the palace.

Then, without wings or jet engines or rockets, it slithered right up into the sky.

“That’s like . . . that’s like a . . . ,” Jarrah said. But she was baffled as to just what the creature might be.

“A giant flying snake?” Mack offered.

“Not a snake!” Xiao said a little angrily, like the idea was disgusting. “That is my father.”

“Your father?” Jarrah said with a disbelieving laugh.

“But he’s a—whatever,” Mack said. “And you’re . . .” Mack felt a warning prickling on the back of his neck. Mack was good at noticing things. He’d been distracted by the unreal sights before him. But still he’d heard a slight shushing, slithering sound coming from Xiao’s direction. And he’d noticed that her name, Xiao Long, had the same word—Long—as the name of this place, Long Xiang.

Slowly Mack turned.

Xiao was much smaller than her father. But even more brightly colored, mostly a delicate turquoise with gold streaks. And scales. And the four stubby legs.

“Jarrah,” Mack said.

“Ya ah ah!” Jarrah cried.

“Long,” Mack said. “What does that mean in Mandarin?”