Underworlds #1: The Battle Begins Read Free Page A

vases and pots at the wolf, while Sydney pulled a tiny screwdriver from her backpack and began to unscrew the grate.
    “Shop teachers’ daughters are always prepared,” she said under her breath.
    The wolf roared again, and the lower shelves burst into flame.
    “Sydney!” I cried.
    “Got it,” she said. She yanked out the grille, threw it over her shoulder, and we scrambled into the darkness beyond. By the time the wolf clawed its way up the shelves, we were deep into the guts of the house. We crawled through one turn after another until we found a second vent. Together we kicked it out, jumped down onto the dining room table, and got out of the house as fast as we could. I made sure to lock the door behind me.
    The wolf was still inside, roaring and all crazy mad. The whole thing seemed unreal, but we couldn’t stop to think about it. We ran until we saw our bus in front of the auditorium, and we climbed on, breathless and soaked with sweat.
    When I slumped into my seat, my heart was beating like a drum. My veins had turned to ice. My tongue didn’t work.
    But I still had Dana’s book.

T HE OTHER BAND KIDS DIDN’T LIKE THAT WE HAD skipped the concert. But that hardly sank in. Our ride back to school was pretty much a blur — all because of Dana’s book.
    It bulged with bookmarks, sticky notes, highlighted passages, dog-eared pages, circled words, and hundreds of notes, scrawled up and down the sides of nearly every page. Dana had practically written a whole other book in the margins.
    “This better be the right book,” said Jon. “I’m not going back in that creepy house.”
    “If we actually believe what we saw in that house,” said Sydney, “and Dana really did vanish into the floor —”
    “We do and she did,” I said.
    “— then this book may tell us where she went. Maybe even something about what you heard.”
    “‘The battle begins,’” I said, shuddering.
    Sydney tapped our shoulders and whispered. “Guys, we’ll be back at school before we know it, so we should read fast. Let’s huddle!” Syd might have seemed a bit snobby at first. But I had to admit that she wasn’t so bad.
    We started poring over the stories Dana had marked. Some were about gods and goddesses. Others were about heroes and monsters. And not just the usual Greek ones. Norse gods from Scandinavia, like Thor and Odin. Egyptian creatures, like the Phoenix and the Sphinx. Even some of the fables from later in history, like Beowulf the dragon slayer.
    One name was circled on every page where it occurred: Hades, ruler of the ancient Underworld. In the margin next to one passage, Dana had scribbled: “Beware Hades’ bargains ….”
    “I remember Hades from the stories,” said Sydney. “He’s terrifying. And strict. He has to be because he’s the Greek king of the dead.”
    “I like this guy Jason. He was cool,” said Jon, tapping his finger on one page. “Getting an awesome team together for a big quest. Like us, forming a band.”
    Then I read the story of Argus, a beast in charge of keeping people captive. He had a hundred eyes.
    “A hundred eyes?” I said. “Like what I saw under the floor of the school? But that’s … no … that’s mythology.”
    “Argus is a monster,” Jon pointed out, scanning the rest of the page. “You said Dana talked about monsters. The only way Argus could be stopped was with music. A lullaby.”
    One story that may have been the most marked up was about the Greek hero Orpheus. Dana’s squiggly marks ran up and down the page: in pencil, in pen, in marker. We could barely read the original text.

    “This seems really big,” I said. “She spent a lot of time here.”
    “Orpheus was a musician whose wife died and went to Hades’ Underworld,” said Sydney, reading over my shoulder. “He descended to the Underworld to bring her back.”
    “I’ve heard about that one,” I said.
    Sydney continued. “Hades made a bargain with him. He could lead his wife to our world, as