The Power. Michael Grant

and stared. She did not know how to play it cool. Like hotness, cool had also not yet been invented, so people just pretty much acted however they felt and expressed their emotions openly.

      These were very primitive times.

      “Why are you staring at me?” the young man asked.

      “Because your hands are as gold rings set with beryl,” Risky said. “Your belly is as bright ivory overlaid with sapphires. Your legs are as pillars of marble set upon sockets of fine gold. Your countenance is as Lebanon, excellent as the cedars, and your mouth is most suh-weet.”

      Somehow the sight of this boy was making Risky go weak in the knees but strong in the similes. She knew she was babbling. She knew it was crazy, but it was how she felt. She felt smitten. She felt gobsmacked. She felt … love.

      “I like your hair,” the boy said. “You have the hair of a goddess.”

      “I am a goddess,” Risky pointed out. “See?” To demonstrate, she transformed into a huge beast made up of the useful parts of a lion, a bear, a ram, and a bull. But she kept the hair through the whole thing.

      The boy turned and ran, but Risky bounded on her powerful kangaroo legs (yeah, kangaroo, too) and smacked him down on his back. She landed atop him and once again became her usual amazingly attractive self.

      “What’s your name, human boy?”

      “G-G-G-G-Gil.”

      “G-G-G-G-Gil?”

      He swallowed hard and said, “Gil. Gil Gamesh.”

      “Epic,” she said approvingly. She jumped up effortlessly and pulled him to his feet. “I need to build a temple for the Pale Queen.”

      “The Pale Queen?” Gil echoed. He frowned. “But isn’t she evil?”

      “Oh, she’s evil all right,” Risky said with airy dismissal.

      “I heard she demanded a human sacrifice of a thousand Amalekites.”

      Risky spread her hands and smiled. “They were out of goats.”

      “Will she demand human sacrifices here in Babylon?”

      “That depends. How fast do you think we can get a temple built?”

      Oh, the days that followed were magical for Risky. She and Gil chose an architect for the temple. Then they picked out draperies and looked at paint samples and interviewed potential priests. There were so many details: whether to have pews or just make everyone stand, whether they would have music—possibly bleating horns—which knives to use to cut the throats of sacrifices, whether the blood would be caught in copper bowls or silver bowls. (Both were hard to keep polished, but this “bronze” everyone was talking about struck them both as too newfangled.)

      Gil took one job for himself, keeping it coyly secret from Risky: finding a sculptor for the great statue of the Pale Queen that would dominate the altar.

      The more they worked together, the more they liked each other. They held hands. They gazed into each other’s eyes. Gil even wrote her poetry.

       Your neck is like a gazelle’s,

       You’re good at magic and spells,

       Your skin is fair,

       I like your hair,

       When I look at you my heart swells.

      No one said it was great poetry. Gil was just starting out as a writer and poet. He was actually much better at sword fighting than writing. But he was also very organized and had a way of getting things done that sometimes surprised Risky. When it was time to form the bricks for the temple’s foundation, Risky suggested sending a conquering army to enslave the Canaanites and use their blood to mix with the mortar.

      Gil came up with a totally different approach: he simply hired some professional bricklayers and used water to mix with the mortar.

      “You’re so efficient,” Risky gushed.

      The girl was smitten.

      And so was Gil.

      Their love burned hot for a while. But that which burns hottest often burns out quickest. Like a match that flares in the darkness only to be extinguished by the smallest breeze.

      And when love dies …

      

      ack and Stefan had been shrunk back to normal size again by the time Xiao returned to report that Valin had likewise shrunk upon reaching Amritsar.

      “Did you see where he went? Would you be able to find it again?” Mack asked her as she shifted back to human shape.

      “Easily. He and Paddy went into the Golden Temple.”

      “The what now?”

      At this point they were outside the airport, completely surrounded by khaki-uniformed men wearing khaki turbans and carrying nightsticks. These were Amritsar police. There was also a swiftly growing number of men in camouflage uniforms, some in turbans, some in berets, all armed with rifles. These were Indian military.

      Beyond the ring of threatening police and military forces were regular folks with cell phones taking pictures. And somehow paparazzi were there clicking away from behind superlong lenses.

      None of this worried Mack very much. First of all, he was done worrying about YouTube. It was just a given that they would be starring in yet another viral video.

      And the armed men weren’t a great concern because, frankly, at this point the Magnificent Seven had more than enough Vargran to deal with mere humans. Indeed, Sylvie, Jarrah, and Charlie had combined to freeze the armed men in place, which was why Mack was not handcuffed and on his way to jail.

      This meant that all the beards on all those armed men were also frozen in place. This definitely made them less terrifying. After all, a beard at rest will stay at rest, while a beard in motion may run right into you at some point.²¹

      Dietmar had his phone out and was googling the “Golden Temple.” Actually he pronounced it “golten,” with a t. It irritated Mack, as most things about Dietmar did.

      “It is a temple belonging to the Sikh religion,” Dietmar reported.