Spradlin - The Spy Who Totally Had a Crush on Me

To Tyler, Kevin, Pilar, Christian, Alex, Brent, Jordan, Scott, & Nathan

FROM MY HIDING PLACE in the rocks behind the stone altar, I watched as Simon Blankenship unrolled the Scroll of the Enlightened and began to read from it in a long-dead language. He was dressed in his full-fledged Mithrian regalia: flowing black robe, golden medallion, and a ridiculous-looking helmet that had a pair of bullhorns jutting out of each side. A truly comical look. In fact, if I hadnt been scared out of my wits, I would have laughed right then. What a meathead. But he didnt know I was there. I was going to have to be very careful to make it out of this temple alive.

Simon was there to begin the first phase of a ritual that he hoped would unleash the mystical forces of Mithras, the Roman God of the Afterlife, upon the earth. Nobody knew for sure what exactly would happen if Mithras was released from his captivity in the Underworld, but since a girl had defeated him in battle and sent him there well over two thousand years ago, we all assumed that when he got out he was going to be in a very bad mood.

Slowly and quietly, I reached into my fanny pack and pulled out a small device about the size of a cell phone and very quietly switched it on. The power light flashed on and I could feel the device begin to vibrate in my hand. I set the timer on the device for thirty seconds and then ever so gently set it on a small ledge that jutted out from behind the altar. I removed a pair of specially designed earphones and placed them over my ears. Crouching behind the altar, I waited, counting down with the timer on the screen of the device.

Id just activated a sonic-stun transmitter. Brent Christian, who was my classmate at Blackthorn Academy back home in Pennsylvania, had recently invented it. Its funny that I now refer to Blackthorn Academy as my home. When I first got there a few months before, that certainly wasnt the case. I thought about running away all the time and actually tried it once. Then I discovered that Mr. Kim had a super-secret hideout below the school. And that there was a secret Top Floor section at the school where Mr. Kim trained students. And that Mr. Kims ex-partner is an evil, megalomaniacal, crazy-as-a loon madman. I ultimately decided it was better to stay and fight than spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder. More about that later. Right now I had to concentrate.

I was there to retrieve the Book of Seraphim. Somehow Simon or one of his followers had managed to steal the book from where we had it safeguarded at Blackthorn Academy. We dont know how he did it. We just knew we had to get it back.

The sonic-stun transmitter was supposed to generate a very high-pitched sonic blast when it went off. It would basically knock down everyone who wasnt wearing the proper soundproof headgear, rendering each of them unconscious for a few minutes. If it worked, you could take out a room full of people with no smoke or explosions that might seriously injure anyone or destroy any priceless artifacts you wanted to preserve. At least that was the theory. Wed tested it a few times and it worked fine. My only fear was that things had a way of going wrong whenever we were around Blankenship. Deadly wrong. So this was the first real test for Brents little device and I needed to keep my fingers crossed.

The rest of the Mithrians (there were about ten of them in the temple) were chanting along with Simon. This must be the Ritual of the Undead that Mr. Kim had told us about. Simon, acting as the high priest, would read the names of long-dead Mithrians from the Scroll of the Enlightened and would then call upon their spirit power to help him summon Mithras from the Afterlife. Except that Simon didnt know that he was going to have a very large and painful earache in another fifteen seconds. That would sure put a damper on his zombie party. Freak.

Brents device worked just like it was supposed to. When the timer counted down to zero, it let out a wailing, high-frequency blast. Through my earphones it sounded like a loud humming sound. Those that were standing in the temple were driven to their knees by the force of the sound. The device tweeted its little song for ten seconds and by the time it finished, everyone, including Simon, was on the ground, hands over their ears, lapsing into unconsciousness.

When it went silent, I tore off the earphones and jumped up from my hiding place, moving to the front of the altar. Simon lay sprawled on the ground in front of it, his right hand still clutching the scroll. I grabbed it out of his hand and pulled a collapsible knapsack out of my fanny pack. I snapped it open and stuffed the scroll inside, reaching down to yank the medallion off of Simons neck and stuffing that in the knapsack too. Then I turned to the altar and saw the Book of Seraphim lying there before me.

The Book of Seraphim was the key to everything. It was written thousands of years ago by the Emperor Flavius, the last emperor of Rome and last high priest of Mithras. It was a written record of Mithrass battles with the forces of Etherea, Goddess of Light. The Roman Empire was about to fall, facing defeat from the forces of Queen Naromi of the Persian Empire. She and her followers worshipped Etherea. Flavius believed that only darkness could defeat light so he called upon Mithras to restore the power of the Empire and beat back the forces of Etherea. But, to make things simple, he messed up. Misread a couple of prophecies. Made some bad mystical decisions and was soundly whipped by Queen Naromis forces in the end. So he wrote everything down is this big book, sent his men off to the far corners of the world to hide the sacred relics of Mithras, and then was pretty much relegated to a footnote in history.

According to legend, this great victory gave Etherea the power to banish Mithras to the Afterlife forever, which she did. But, of course, there was one little problem. You see those gods and goddesses were tricky. They always left a loophole or backdoor in all their little proclamations. The prophecy delivered by the gods said that when both Mithras and Etherea were reborn in human form, then they would battle each other for dominion over mankind. For a long time, nobody believed any of this. It was just one of those cute legends that was known to a few scholarly types and generally not believed or accepted. Until now.

Thats because several years ago Simon Blankenship uncovered the Book of Seraphim in a Mithrian Temple in the desert of Kuzbekistan. When he found it, all kinds of weird stuff happened to him in the temple and it turns out that he is (or thinks he is, Im still not convinced about all of this) Mithras reborn. We know this because Mr. Kim, my headmaster at Blackthorn Academy, was with him on that particular mission and saw what happened in the temple with his own eyes. So all that was left was for Mr. Kim to find Etherea reborn before Simonand if you havent guessed by now, thats where I come in. Me, Rachel Buchanan. Goddess reincarnated. Let me tell you, its not as cool as it sounds. But again, more of that later. Right now I had a madman to foil.

The Book of Seraphim is big and heavy. Its cover is encrusted with jewels and the binding is made out of thick leather. There are a couple of hundred parchment pages in the book. So its not like were dealing with a little paperback here. I hefted the book off the altar, put it into my knapsack, slipped the bag onto my shoulders, and took a quick look around the altar. Wed lost track of Simon for the last couple of weeks and I needed to make sure that he hadnt somehow found the other missing relics. I didnt see anything so I stepped over Simon and made my way to the entrance of the temple. I needed to get out of there.