To Hawaii, with Love Read online

  They herded me toward the scaffolding elevator, and we all rode it down to the bottom. Then they took me over by the bonfire and we waited.

  Blankenship came strolling out of a nearby lava tube. He was wearing a robe like mine, only black. His gold medallion shone in the firelight. He also wore some type of mask or helmet with a giant pair of horns coming out of the side of it. Frankly, he looked ridiculous, like a really bad mascot for a college football team, or like some kind of twisted opera singer. He had two other Mithrians with him. There were about ten Mithrians now at the bottom of the pit, and I wasn’t sure how many up at the top, if any. It was dark and I couldn’t get an accurate count.

  Simon started to speak.

  “Children of Mithras! We stand tonight on a sacred place. Here, many hundreds of years ago, the first of our kind brought the word of Mithras to this place. We do not know what happened to them. But we know they left one of the sacred relics here for us to find. Tonight we will command a sacrifice and start on the path for Mithras’ darkness to flow across the land. Begin.”

  I figured this was my cue. I was about to be boiled in oil, or drawn and quartered, or maybe shot out of a cannon. That would at least be a cool way to go.

  But then a couple of Mithrians pulled Pilar out of the entrance to the lava tube and dragged her up to the fire.

  “Pilar,” I screamed.

  One of the Mithrians shoved her to her knees. Then I saw a big dagger flash in Simon’s hand.

  “What are you doing?” I yelled at him. “I’m supposed to be your sacrifice, not her! Let her go!”

  “I think not,” he said to me. He turned to his audience again.

  “With villainy, Etherea defeated Mithras and he retreated to the underworld. He has waited for thousands of years to ascend. The prophecy says that when Mithras and Etherea are both reborn, the first step in the ascension of Mithras is that Etherea must lose that which is dearest to her. Etherea reborn stands before us now. And as it is written, we shall now take that which is dearest to her.”

  What? What is this mumbo jumbo about a prophecy?

  “Stop this, you big freak!” I yelled. “You’re supposed to be sacrificing me! That’s what all this is about. Can’t you even figure out your own stupid prophecy?”

  “On the contrary,” he said. “The prophecy is quite clear in the Book of Seraphim. The first sacrifice is to be that which Etherea holds most dear. Obviously you are quite attached to Ms. Jordan; therefore, Mithras will accept her sacrifice.”

  “That shows how much you know. Your prophecy is wrong, you idiot. You have the wrong book! Mr. Kim planted a fake in the gallery in Washington and you stole the wrong one!”

  For a moment, in the firelight, I could see uncertainty cloud Blankenship’s eyes. He’d been waiting years to get to this point, and obviously he didn’t want to screw it up. But I couldn’t keep the desperation out of my voice, and I could tell he didn’t believe me.

  “Nice try,” he said. “Again, I applaud your bravery. I even admire it.” I saw Leikala frown when he said that. She really hated my guts, which is strange, because I’m actually a very nice person. Blankenship was still talking.

  “But attempting to deceive me won’t work. My scholars have assured me that I have the authentic book in my—”

  “Oh, I’m sure they have! In the first place, it’s impossible to take you seriously with you wearing that stupid costume. You look like you’re ready for trick-or-treat or a Star Trek convention. In the second place, what do you think you would do to one of your stupid scholars if they dared to tell you your copy was a fake? Mr. Kim tricked you. He has the real book!” I knew I shouldn’t be blabbing all these details. But he had a knife to my best friend’s throat. What else could I do?

  “And you expect me to believe that you wouldn’t tell any lie to save your friend’s life?” He held the dagger closer to Pilar and actually ran it along her throat. Her eyes got wide, but she didn’t flinch. I made a promise to myself right then. If it took me the rest of my life, I was going to take this guy down. No matter what it took, no matter where I had to go or what I had to do, Mithras was toast.

  “Even if your stupid prophecy was right, you’re going about it completely wrong! Take that which is dearest to me? Well, it ain’t her. I don’t even like her. I mean, look at her hair, for crying out loud. It’s like a rats’ nest.” Pilar’s eyes narrowed. Even when you’re in a life-and-death situation, you really should never criticize another girl’s hair.

  “I don’t believe you,” he said. “Continue with the ceremony!”

  “I mean it!” I shouted. “If you think she’s what’s closest to me, then you are crazy! If you wanted to destroy ‘that which is closest to me,’ then you’d better blow up the nearest Abercrombie & Fitch! Or smash my laptop! Or bump off Ashton Kutcher! All of those things are ‘dearer’ to me than her!” Dumb and Dumber were holding my arms, or else I would have charged him.

  And then, all of a sudden, the sky around us exploded in a flash of blinding red light.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The Boys Are Back in Town

  For a minute I couldn’t figure out what was happening. We kept hearing and seeing these explosions of red light that filled the pit all around us. Then it hit me. Alex! He’d warned me “there would be fireworks”! He was using the flare gun that Brent had brought to shoot flares all around the pit. It was loud and confusing and a perfect diversion.

  This was my chance. Dumb and Dumber had relaxed their grip on me in the confusion. I dropped straight to the ground and jerked my arms free. Then I sprang to my feet and ran at Blankenship. He was looking up at the flares going off and didn’t see me coming. I put my shoulder down and ran right into his chest, knocking him to the ground. Pilar spun away. Even though her hands were tied behind her, her feet were free.

  “Run!” I yelled at her, and she didn’t have to be told twice. She sprinted across the bottom of the pit, toward the lava tube on the opposite side.

  I wanted them to have to chase us both, so I started to sprint toward the scaffolding. But I got only a few steps before I felt someone grab my robe from behind. I turned around to see Leikala clutching the gown and digging in her heels.

  “Let me go!” I screamed at her.

  “No!” she yelled.

  I grabbed a handful of the gown as hard as I could and twisted in the opposite direction. The sudden change in balance made her fall to the ground and lose her grip. I sprinted to the scaffolding and started climbing up. I scampered up a few feet and then felt the scaffolding shake. Glancing down, I saw Dumber climbing up after me. I kept climbing as fast as I could. When I was maybe thirty feet from the top, I felt the scaffolding vibrate as the elevator started down from above.

  Then somehow a bright light lit up the pit. I heard this loud roaring noise and felt a wind whip up all around us. But I was being cut off from escape and couldn’t pay attention to all of that. I was trapped about thirty feet up from the ground, with Dumber gaining from below and the elevator coming down to crush me. My only chance was to see if I could work around to the side, out of the way of the elevator.

  I looked down again to see Dumber getting closer. That was my mistake, because as I was trying to move sideways on the scaffolding I missed the crossbar with my foot and stumbled. I tried desperately to clutch at the next crossbar with my hand, but I couldn’t reach it. I felt Dumber reach out and snatch my ankle as I fell past him.

  I heard Pilar scream. If Dumber let go, I wasn’t going to survive the fall. Even if I did, Mithras would have me, and I knew what would happen next. But I could hear Dumber grunting as he tried to hold on to me and keep his grip on the scaffolding. He was hanging off the crossbar at a hard angle. We slipped an inch, then another, and a few seconds later, he let go of my ankle.

  In about one and a half seconds, as I floated toward my death, I remembered Pilar telling me about her dream: me in a white robe, falling toward Mithras. She really was psychic. Had that dream been o
nly three days ago? Good-bye, cruel world, I thought.

  Except that I didn’t die. I didn’t die because about ten feet from the ground, something stopped me. I felt a huge crushing pressure around my ribs and I stopped in midair with a lurch. Then I heard a familiar voice.

  “See what happens when you talk us into leaving school?” Brent said.

  Brent! He was strapped into a harness hanging from a helicopter that hovered above the pit. That had been the loud whirring noisy windy bright thing. He had dived out of the helicopter and grabbed me around the waist as I fell. I couldn’t believe it. I was so relieved, I wanted to kiss him. Right then, for a second, I felt completely safe. It’s funny how things fly through your mind at times like this. It just seemed so cool that Brent was always watching out for me. He was holding me like I was light as a feather. I didn’t realize how strong he was.

  “Are you okay?” he said.

  “I am now,” I said.

  The helicopter pulled us up to the edge of the pit and set us on the ground. The elevator had reached the bottom of the pit, and some more of the Mithrians had clambered onto it and were starting back up. Brent set me down, walked over to the control panel, and yanked on a couple of wires. There was a sparking flash and the elevator came to a halt. Now they couldn’t get up unless they climbed.

  Alex came running up to us, holding the smoking flare gun in his hand.

  “Where’s Pilar?” he shouted.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “When the flares went off we got separated. She was headed for the lava tube, so maybe she got away.”

  “We need to find her,” he said. He sounded worried.

  “Looking for this?” shouted Blankenship from below.

  In horror, we watched as two Mithrians walked out of the tube with Pilar in tow. When she got close to the bonfire, we could see that her face looked totally dejected.

  “We’ll be able to complete the sacrifice after all,” he said. He pulled the dagger from his robe and held it aloft. The metal flashed in the firelight.

  “No!” shouted Alex. He pushed past Brent and me and started to the edge of the scaffolding like he was going to climb down and take them all on. Brent reached out and grabbed him. Alex tried to struggle free.

  “Alex, wait!” I shouted. “Blankenship! Listen to me. Your book is a fake. But if you don’t believe that, believe this. I know where the missing artifact is on this island. If you harm her in any way, I’ll make sure you never get it. I will burn it and throw the ashes into the deepest part of the ocean!”

  “You’re a very convincing liar, Etherea! But your friend must die. Her death brings Mithras power!”

  He raised the dagger. This was it.

  “I’ll get it for you!” I shouted.

  Blankenship lowered the dagger.

  “What did you say?” he asked.

  “You heard me,” I said. “I know where it is. And I can get it. I’ll trade it for Pilar. Give me six hours. What do you have to lose?”

  Pilar started yelling through her gag.

  Blankenship stopped for a moment. Doubt crossed his face. If I had the artifact, that would be impossible to resist. It was the one thing he needed.

  “All right,” he said finally. “We keep the girl. Return in four hours with the statue or she dies.”

  “I need at least six hours,” I said.

  “You have four hours,” Blankenship said.

  “I need six.”

  “Four.”

  “Six!”

  “Four.” He wouldn’t negotiate. I may not have mentioned it before, but I really, really didn’t like this guy.

  “So if I bring you the artifact, you’ll let us go?”

  “Oh no, my dear Etherea. That is not the deal at all. You bring me the artifact and she lives. I let her go. But you stay with me. That is the deal.”

  Well, I had to say his deal pretty much sucked. But I couldn’t think of any other way out of this.

  “All right. All right. I’ll do it.” Pilar was getting all bug-eyed and making noises and shaking her head back and forth. I could tell she hated this plan, but I wasn’t going to let her die because of me.

  “No tricks, Etherea. We will meet in the valley where you escaped from the compound. If you call the police or try any of your tricks, she dies. You have four hours. Starting now.”

  He turned and walked away across the floor of the pit. Pilar was being dragged along after him by Dumb and Dumber, and they all entered the lava tube and disappeared. The clearing fell silent. It was almost like they’d never been there at all.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Not Much of a Plan as Plans Go

  Alex and Brent looked at me. We were all too stunned to say anything for a minute. Then we all started talking at once, even Brent.

  “What was all that about the artifact? Did you really find it?” Brent asked.

  “Well, no, but Pilar figured out where it is, sort of.”

  “Sort of? What do you mean sort of? You know where it is, right?” Alex said.

  “Well, it was kind of confusing because we were being chased and then she said some weird stuff about a place where Pele walks into the sea and I totally had no idea what she was talking about but I bet we can figure it out.”

  “What? You just said…” He was yelling. Alex yelled a lot.

  “Alex, enough!” Brent said sharply. He was normally so quiet that his sharp tone startled us. “Rachel, tell us exactly what happened and what Pilar said. As best as you can remember,” he said. Quiet, mysterious Brent taking charge in a crisis. Cool.

  So I did. I told them everything Pilar had said when she was looking at the map in the observation post. Brent pulled a small flashlight and a map of the island out of his knapsack. He spread it on the ground. I showed him where I thought she’d pointed.

  The spot on the map called Pele’s Point.

  “That’s it,” I said. “That’s the place she was talking about. The relic must be there.”

  “How do we know?” Alex said. “Maybe she was wrong. We don’t have time to be wrong here.”

  He was right. If we were wrong, then Pilar was going to die. But Pele’s Point was all we had. I just hoped it was enough.

  Brent pulled out a walkie-talkie and said something into it. A few minutes later the helicopter, which had been circling the area, came swooping back in and landed not too far away from where we stood. Before we got in, I ran back to the van (which the moron Mithrians had left there, unlocked) and grabbed the duffel bag with my phone and cash in it. Then we all hopped aboard the helicopter.

  The pilot was a Hawaiian named Kanale. He was a big friendly guy and obviously pals with Brent and Alex. Alex explained that after we’d disappeared they’d hitched back to the hotel, which, they discovered, offered helicopter tours of the island. And the best thing was it could be charged directly to the room, which was on my dad’s American Express.

  So they had Kanale fly them over the terrain several times, but the jungle canopy was too dense to find anything. (Not to mention the fact that we were hidden inside a mountain.) Finally they told the pilot a little of what happened—that we were missing and we’d been grabbed by some unfriendlies. Kanale agreed to help them.

  At last Brent’s GPS picked up a signal from our watches, which led them to the pit, where Brent had been just in time to snatch me from the jaws of certain death.

  It only took a few minutes by helicopter to get to Volcanoes National Park. We headed for the southern end of the park, where the lava bubbles up out of the ground and runs down into the sea. When the flow is very active, a stream of lava actually shoots out of the side of a cliff and into the water like a molten waterfall. The lava instantly cools when it hits the water and steam rises high into the sky. The cooled lava becomes hard in the water and builds up over time. It is said that the Big Island of Hawaii is growing by a few feet each day as the lava hardens into land.

  At night it was beautiful. But I couldn’t concentrate on it, as my m
ind was consumed by thoughts of Pilar being held prisoner by a madman, all because of me. I was twisting and fidgeting in my seat. Alex sat facing me, and Brent sat to my left. Never missing an opportunity to learn something, he was staring intently out the window at the lava flow. All I could think about was how guilty I felt. Once again, I had dragged my friends from the safety of the school and directly into danger. Maybe Alex was right—I was nothing but a magnet for trouble.

  I was so jumpy, I almost screamed when Alex reached out and took my hand. I thought he was going to yell at me to keep still or stay focused or something like that. But he didn’t. He held my hand and looked at me. I could see the concern in his face, and then I could tell that even though he was most worried about Pilar he was also concerned about me.

  “She’ll be all right,” he said.

  “She might not be,” I said.

  I looked at him and tried really hard, given the gravity of the situation, to not notice how incredibly blue his eyes were. But they were so blue.

  “Yes, she will. You don’t know her like I do. Pilar is tough. She’s smart. She’s not going to crack, and you won’t either. You don’t give yourself enough credit sometimes, Raych,” he said. Did he just call me Raych? Gulp. He’d never called me that before.

  He was still holding my hand, and at this point I was hoping he didn’t notice that my palm was getting all sweaty.

  “I don’t want any credit for anything. I just want her safe,” I said.

  He gave my hand a squeeze. “I know,” he said. “I know.”

  And he smiled at me. It was a great smile. Stop thinking about his smile, I scolded myself. Your best friend, his girlfriend, is in horrible danger. But Alex’s was the Michael Jordan of smiles.

  “I don’t know what to do,” I said.

  “You’ll think of something.”