Will Wilder #3 Read online

  ALSO BY RAYMOND ARROYO

  Will Wilder: The Relic of Perilous Falls

  Will Wilder: The Lost Staff of Wonders

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2019 by Raymond Arroyo

  Cover art and interior illustrations copyright © 2019 by Jeff Nentrup

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Crown Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  Crown and the colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Visit us on the Web! rhcbooks.com

  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at RHTeachersLibrarians.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Arroyo, Raymond, author.

  Title: The Amulet of Power / Raymond Arroyo.

  Description: First edition. | New York: Crown Books for Young Readers, [2019] | Series: Will wilder; book 3 | Summary: When twelve-year-old Will Wilder uses the Amulet of Power to get on the Perilous Falls football team, he attracts dark forces that shadow townspeople, disturb graves, and lull many into a stupor.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018050334 | ISBN 978-0-553-53971-4 (hardback) | ISBN 978-0-553-53973-8 (epub)

  Subjects: CYAC: Supernatural—Fiction. | Demonology—Fiction. | Football—Fiction. | BISAC: JUVENILE FICTION / Action & Adventure / General. | JUVENILE FICTION / Family / General (see also headings under Social Issues). | JUVENILE FICTION / Religious / General.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.A74352 Amu 2019 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  Ebook ISBN 9780553539738

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v5.4

  ep

  For my three inspirations,

  Mariella, Lorenzo, and Alexander

  And for my adventurous readers,

  the honorary citizens of Perilous Falls

  Contents

  Cover

  Also by Raymond Arroyo

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue: The Helmet and the Locks

  Chapter 1: Bigger and Stronger

  Chapter 2: Afraid?

  Chapter 3: The Floating Aunt

  Chapter 4: Deploying the Relics

  Chapter 5: A Familiar Tune

  Chapter 6: The Women of Wormwood

  Chapter 7: The Power of the Amulet

  Chapter 8: Game Changer

  Chapter 9: A Lion in the Hall

  Chapter 10: The Third Claw Rises

  Chapter 11: Leers and Spears

  Chapter 12: The Warning

  Chapter 13: Dis

  Chapter 14: The Ambush

  Chapter 15: The Barrel Battle

  Chapter 16: The Touch of Gamaliel

  Chapter 17: The Incense Recipe

  Chapter 18: Into the Deep

  Chapter 19: Might Makes Fright

  Chapter 20: A Little Game

  Chapter 21: Imp Invasion

  Chapter 22: Surrounded by Death

  Chapter 23: Dust to Dust

  Chapter 24: Asmodeus

  Chapter 25: Taken

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  It is excellent to have a giant’s strength,

  but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant.

  —William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure

  Paris, France

  The Louvre

  November 3, 1940

  What have they gotten me into? Even the halls stink of demons….

  Jacob Wilder’s nose tingled uncontrollably as he pushed the canvas rolling cart through the abandoned Grande Galerie of the chilly museum. Though the Louvre was Paris’s largest and most important temple of art, the art itself was hard to find.

  The dying sun scarcely broke through the skylights overhead as Wilder passed a succession of bare walls. They held nothing but dusty outlines of frames no longer present. Chalk graffiti now marked the places where the art had once hung: Murillo 1, Delacroix 4, Fra Angelico 3. Like so much of Paris since the arrival of the Nazis, the best and brightest had gone into hiding.

  Out of the corner of his right eye, Jacob saw something dark scamper across the wall, heading upward. His eyes narrowed as he studied the ceiling. Black shadows like mold collected at the corners of the room, but he saw nothing more. Still, his nose stung—always an early warning that evil was present or approaching.

  Pushing past a series of marble columns into the next section of the hall, his glance casually drifted overhead. What he spotted paralyzed him. Hunchbacked creatures like small, dark monkeys frantically crawled across the ceiling. Defying gravity, hundreds of the slick beasts leapt over one another—scratching, clawing upside down to the far end of the hall.

  Leave it to me to walk into a Fomorii infestation, Jacob thought. It’s a Legion, but what are they running toward? Something big is down there. A marquis of hell? A prince maybe?

  At that moment, a few of the minor demons pointed directly at Jacob, covering their mouths or baring their teeth at him. Wilder silenced his thoughts (which he knew the creatures could read), ignored the diabolic ceiling display, and resumed pushing his cart down the endless corridor. Fomorii came with the territory. Minor demons always swarmed near the major ones. He had a job to do, and being sidetracked by Fomorii was not part of it. Wilder’s pace didn’t slow until he reached rows of gestapo soldiers in shiny helmets and boots near the end of the hall.

  “Something big” was in the Louvre after all.

  Barking in German-accented French, the officer nearest Jacob blocked his path and demanded to see identification. Jacob produced the same documents he had flashed at Nazi checkpoints all over Paris, falsified papers provided by Brethren members of the French Resistance. The documents claimed that Wilder was a “curator of special collections” at the Louvre Museum. The officer sneered at the papers and shoved them back into his hands. Jacob nodded obediently and continued on between the rows of Nazis lining the walls.

  He labored to hold back a sneeze. From the open door on his right, the metallic tinkling of a music box, laughter, and soft German voices spilled into the hallway. An enormously fat man wearing a camel coat and a purple scarf sat on a sofa inside, sipping champagne. A towering Nazi officer and a small bespectacled man in a brown suit presented paintings to the big man. He jabbed a chunky finger at a particular canvas.

  “That one is for my collection,” the fat man said merrily, spilling champagne on his lap. “The Vermeer—The Astronomer—we will offer to the führer.” Two huge cats on the couch suddenly stood at attention and stared at Jacob. But he paid them no mind. He was too distracted by the sea of pint-sized black demons surrounding the three men and the sofa. The creatures’ faces were pressed to the ground, their tiny wings extended to heaven.

  Who are they bowing to?

  AH-CHOO! Jacob’s sneeze exploded in the hall, drawing the eyes of everyone in the room. The fat man lowered his cigar in disgust, glaring at Jacob as if he had just dropped a piece of china.

  “You oaf.
What are you doing here?” a young woman hissed in French, stepping into the doorway. Her ocean-blue eyes fell on the cart Jacob pushed. “Those were to go to the other gallery, fool.” She turned back to the room, dropping her head slightly. “Reich Marshal Goering, dear colonel, please excuse my absence. I must redirect my colleague.”

  The fat man’s attention had already wandered back to the art before him. He waved her away, keeping time with the tune of the lacquered music box on an end table. Oblivious to his hostile cats, he continued greedily surveying his favorite artworks, like a wolf in a shepherd’s field.

  It took everything for Jacob to tear his eyes away from the room. He alone could see the small three-headed demon with pinched faces and long white horns perched on the shoulder of the Nazi officer. Turning away, he silently followed the irate woman in the black pencil skirt down the hall. Moving past the gestapo battalion, he pushed the cart after her for blocks.

  Turning into a side hall off the Grande Galerie, the young woman continued to berate him, her auburn hair shaking. “You must be more attentive. It is an embarrassment to Monsieur Jaujard and all of us when you…” Then as they moved beyond a pair of double doors, into a stairwell, she grabbed Jacob Wilder by the shoulders, spun him around, searched his eyes, and kissed him.

  “I’ve missed you, mon seul et unique,” she said under her breath. “Where have you been?”

  He held her close, whispering. “I came as quickly as I could, Sarah. The Brethren sent me on a mission to Orleans—to protect an artifact. It was at the Abbey of St. Denis. Then as I left, the Nazis invaded the place. I couldn’t leave this relic there.” He released her and ran to the cart, shoving aside the stacked canvases inside. “I need your help.” Beneath the paintings lay a rusted, conical metal helmet. It came to a point at the crown, which was adorned with a few links of hanging chain.

  Sarah gasped, her full lips parting. “That’s not…Is that the helmet of the Maiden?”

  “One and the same. They say when Joan of Arc wore it in battle, she heard divine voices and received messages—even saw visions. The wearer who is pure of heart can supposedly receive similar messages—and hear the voices. I can tell you the Nazis think it’s true. They rounded up a few of the Brethren at the Abbey trying to find it. But I had already smuggled it out in a wine barrel.” He tossed the helmet to Sarah. “Make sure this gets to your friend at the Metropolitan Museum. I’ve got to return to Monte Cassino, but I’ll be back—”

  “You just arrived.”

  Jacob kissed her gently on the cheek, almost as an apology, and took her hand.

  “I know.” Sarah Vaillant sighed, looking away. “You must fight the other war. I’ll show you the way, though I need a favor before you leave.” She began to pull him from the room.

  “One second.” He plucked his battered pith helmet from the cart.

  “You’re still wearing my father’s helmet.” She smirked, touching the brim with her index finger.

  “In a war, you take all the protection you can get.” The pair raced downstairs, carrying their respective helmets into a dark gallery cluttered with broken statues and immense draped paintings.

  Sarah chattered intensely. “All the art in the room upstairs—everything the Germans are rifling through—belongs to Jews all over Paris. Their homes have been raided and their belongings looted.” She pressed a small leather journal into Jacob’s hand. “This is a listing of all the items the Nazis have stolen and shipped out of Paris so far. Protect this, Jacob.”

  He nodded sharply, slipping the journal into his hip pocket. Sarah walked to the corner of the vast room and yanked back a sheet, revealing a white marble sarcophagus. Twisting grapevines and a carved seal with a large P covering an X decorated the front. “This is the only way back to Monte Cassino now. The other two sarcophagi were taken to Austria.”

  The Brethren routinely used stone coffins to travel between far-flung locations. Though they had to recite a formula to transport via (what they called) sarcophagal peregrination, there was one other requirement: the sarcophagi at both the beginning and the end of the voyage had to be identical.

  “I’ll return before you can miss me.” He hugged Sarah and threw his pith helmet into the sarcophagus. It landed softly on a burgundy velvet sack covered in gold Hebrew letters with a pair of wooden handles protruding from the top and bottom.

  “Take that with you. It may be the last Torah in Paris. I hid it there the other day. When these monsters are gone, perhaps we can return it to its rightful owners,” Sarah said, her face uncharacteristically flushing. “But you can’t leave yet. We’ve found something downstairs: a Keep that the abbot would like you to inspect.”

  “A Keep?” Jacob reluctantly retrieved his pith helmet, put it on, and followed Sarah through a heavy wooden door and down a medieval staircase. The winding catacombs at the bottom went on for what seemed like blocks. Sarah cradled St. Joan’s metal helmet under one arm and stayed close to Jacob as he lit their way with his flashlight. It was comforting to be near him again. “The big man upstairs is Hermann Goering. He’s the highest-ranking Nazi officer under Hitler. The horrible man is filling trains with looted art and antiquities. He’s seeking relics too. Colonel Von Groll—the tall officer—is not all bad. Though he’s only been here a few days, he seems like a charming man.”

  “You should have seen Colonel Charming’s friends hanging from the ceiling of the Grande Galerie.” Jacob turned the light on Sarah’s porcelain face.

  “Don’t be jealous. I said he seems charming. But he’s not you.” She slipped her arm under his and playfully pulled him along the tight, stoned hall. “We’re going just up here around the—” She suddenly cried out. Jacob shoved her behind him and shone the light to the ground. A stream of brown dried blood issued from an open chamber.

  “What is this place?”

  “I don’t know. The Nazis come down here every few days for officer meetings,” Sarah sputtered. “They’re into all manner of occult things….”

  “Stay here.” Jacob ventured in alone. He stood on the highest level in the room, which encircled a sunken center. His flashlight found a lifeless body slumped against the wall. The dead man’s slicked black hair and hard features were strangely familiar. One blue eye stared ahead, and the other—hazel and glazed—turned off to the side. A deep, thick red gash ran from the man’s head clear down to his left kneecap. Three lighter slashes of similar length bordered it. What in blazes cut this fellow open? Jacob searched the room for answers. He found a gold saucer of thickened blood in the middle of the room, scrawlings in the dirt, and toppled candelabras. Necromancy maybe—some type of blood ritual. What were they trying to do?

  “There is a dead man in here. We’ve got to go,” Jacob yelled to Sarah, joining her in the hallway.

  “Who is he?”

  “No telling. Where is the Keep?”

  “It’s just here.” Sarah worriedly led him to a rounded wall of pocked stone. A huge block jutted from the Keep. Three sculptures carved onto the side of the structure arrested Jacob’s attention.

  * * *

  Upstairs, in the side room of the Grande Galerie, Reich Marshal Goering’s ice-blue eyes fell on a tray of jewelry presented to him by the small groveling man in brown. The rings, brooches, even the assorted gems were not worth sending on to Germany. His thin lips turned downward.

  “Trash,” he pronounced before pawing a handful of the items and slipping them into his coat pocket. The eyebrow of the man in brown rose slightly, but when Goering met his eyes, he fearfully turned away. Dark creatures invisible to those in the room perched on the back edge of the sofa. One sloppy demon, with a Buddha-like belly and ram’s horns, shuffled sideways and whispered into the Reich Marshal’s ear.

  “Colonel Von Groll,” Goering muttered, as if he’d just been struck by a thought. The Nazi officer near the sofa clicked his heels. “I miss you
r lovely assistant. She had such a refreshing air about her.” He scratched a piece of cigar paper from his bloated tongue and rubbed it on the sofa cushion. “Where has the dear girl gotten to? She is needed here.”

  “As you wish, Reich Marshal,” the colonel said stiffly. On his way out of the room, Von Groll’s good blue eye caught the Reich Marshal stuffing a small jade figurine from a side table into his pocket. The colonel’s other eye, the hazel-colored glass one, wandered slightly, seeing nothing.

  * * *

  Jacob studied the three crude sculptures on the side of the Keep: a lion with gaping jaws, a honeycomb with a hole up top, and an open flower with nothing at its center. Each sculpture featured an opening big enough to accommodate a hand.

  “The abbot is confused by the Keep. There is no door or entryway.” Sarah gesticulated with the rusted helmet of St. Joan. “The Latin inscription on the big block there reads: ‘The righteous Judge—’ ”

  “The righteous Judge finds sweetness within,” Jacob said, flashing his green eyes at her. “I did pretty well in Latin.”

  “So what does it mean?” She lit a torch on the wall behind them.

  “Samson. The strong man in the Old Testament.” Jacob squatted, peering into the holes of the three carvings. “He was one of the Judges of Israel—one of their great leaders.”

  “And how does that help us open the Keep?” Sarah asked. She put the rusted helmet on her head, smiling. “Maybe I should try to contact one of Joan’s voices.”

  “I wouldn’t toy with that.” Jacob turned back to the three carvings. “Where would the righteous Judge find ‘sweetness within’?” He quickly shoved his hand into the gaping mouth of the lion and pulled at the lever inside. “Samson tore a lion apart and later found honey in its jaws.”