Mystics 3-Book Collection (13 page)

Zoey couldn’t hide her satisfaction as she
bagged her fairies. When she was finished, she had twenty-one of
them in her bag. Maybe she’d break Tristan’s record tonight.

“Think that no one can top that?”

Stuart strolled towards them with a
beautiful girl with long flowing brown hair. She looked like a
model. Zoey felt instantly self-conscious, and she was glad the
gloom around them hid her burning face. The model was accompanied
by another boy who looked like a gorilla in jeans and a t-shirt.
They all wore the same ruby rings on their fingers.

“I’ve got thirty already, and the night’s
only just beginning,” said Stuart. “
I’m
getting the record
this time.”

“Go away, Stewie,” said Simon lazily. “We
don’t care how many your
friends
bagged for you. Don’t you
have an appointment for a pedicure or something? Your cuticles are
like
way
too big.”

“Shut up, frog—no one’s talking to you,”
snapped Stuart.

Simon laughed softly. “I’ve been called many
things, but never a frog. Is that supposed to be insulting?”

Stuart gave Simon a dirty look and turned to
Zoey. “You want to prove that you’re one of us?” he dared

Zoey looked into his face. There was an
unsettling coldness in his faded blue eyes.

“What’s on your mind?” She knew he was up to
something.

Stuart smiled and pointed down the field.
“See that big rock down there? Well, there are at least forty
fairies behind it, waiting to be sprayed. Think you can handle
that? Or are you scared?”

Zoey followed his gaze. She could see the
rock, but it was too far and dark to see any fairies.

“I don’t get it—why don’t
you
go?”
she said. “You want the record? Why are you telling me this?”

“See? I told you she wouldn’t do it,” said
the girl, batting her long eyelashes at Tristan. “She’s not one of
us. She’s scared. Why don’t you go back home and cry to your mama,
oh wait—I forgot—you don’t
have
a mother.” She and the boy
gorilla laughed.

“Shut up, Claudia,” said Tristan. “You don’t
even know her. She’s the bravest person I know. She’s not scared of
anything.”

Zoey felt the blood rush to her face.

Claudia’s cheeks blushed. “So why does she
need
you
to defend her?” teased the girl. “Are you her
boyfriend or something? I would have thought you’d have better
taste than that, Tristan. She’s not even pretty.”

Zoey glared at the girl with what she hoped
was her best crazy impersonation.

“Beauty isn’t everything,
stick
. At
least I like to eat.”

Before Claudia could counter, Zoey turned to
Stuart. “I’m not scared. I just figured everyone wanted the prize,
including you.”

Stuart smiled. “Since you’re not scared,
let’s see how well you do against forty,” he taunted.

“If you’re truly one of us, then it
shouldn’t be a problem. Fighting mystics should be in your
blood.”

His face was stone cold. “You say you’re one
of us. Then prove it.”

Zoey didn’t know what to say. He made her
blood boil and her skin crawl all at the same time. She hated how
he made her feel so useless and unworthy. Would he and his friends
accept her if she bagged all those fairies? She doubted it.

She charged down towards the big rock
without saying a word. She knew Stuart couldn’t be trusted. She
hated him more than anyone she’d ever known, but he wasn’t going to
ruin everything for her.

“Zoey!” Tristan ran up beside her. “Wait!
Something’s off—it must be a trap. You can’t trust Stuart!
Everything out of his mouth’s a lie.”

“He’s right,” said Simon as he jogged
alongside them. “Never trust a King. I’d rather dig my own kidneys
out with a spoon than trust a King.”

“He dared me, so I’m going.”

Zoey wanted nothing more than to prove to
everyone that she belonged. She’d get all those fairies, if it were
the last thing she did. She could do this.

Zoey turned around and raised her hands.
“You guys have to stay here, I have to do this alone.” She wouldn’t
give Stuart a chance to say that they had helped her in some
way.

“Something’s off, I can feel it,” said
Tristan, “Stuart’s bad, Zoey. You don’t know him like we do. He
wouldn’t just give you an opportunity likes this. He’s planning
something.”

“I think he was born evil,” agreed
Simon.

“Doesn’t matter,” said Zoey. “If you don’t
let me do this alone, I’ll never hear the end of it. Besides, it
can’t be that bad, just a few more fairies. Trust me, I can do
this.”

Zoey marched towards the large rock,
brandishing her spray can before her like a gun. She tossed her bag
on the ground—she was going to need all of her limbs.

The rock was about the size of a large shed,
and above it, forty fairies sat on a long strip of wires gnawing
away at the power lines like famished rats. They ignored Zoey
completely. She needed to get their attention somehow.

“Hey, you there! Hey fairies!” she called.
But it was as though the fairies couldn’t even hear her. They just
kept eating without even a glance in her direction.

“Hey, ugly little critters!” she tried again
louder, and waved her arms.

“Yeah, I’m talking to you! Wanna come down
here and play? Hey fairies!”

But it was as though she didn’t even exist.
The fairies kept feasting, swaying back and forth on the power
lines in a drunken stupor.

So much for that
, Zoey said to
herself. Frustrated, she searched the ground for something to throw
at them.

And then something happened that she hadn’t
expected.

The big rock moved and opened its eyes.

Zoey shrank back, transfixed.

Under a patch of moonlight was a giant
beast. The creature turned slowly towards her, raising itself on
two massive legs the size of tree trunks. Its skin was gray and
hairless, coarse like stone. It unfolded a pair of giant veiny
wings. It was a twelve-foot tall dino-sized fairy, with talons like
machetes. Sparks of blue electricity coiled around its body, and
even from where she stood Zoey could smell a mixture of rotten eggs
and pig manure. Its eyes were not yellow but blue, and they watched
her with a mixture of hatred and wanting. It emitted a low grunt
and looked at the spray can she held in her hand. Then it snarled
from a mouth full of razor-sharp yellow teeth.

Zoey held her breath.

It lunged.

She whipped out her spray can, but the
dino-fairy knocked it out of her hand with a powerful blow that
threw her into the air and landed her on the ground with a painful
crunch. She managed to push herself up and turn around just in time
to see a giant fist smash the ground where she had stood a second
ago. She scrambled further away and turned. The dino-fairy’s eyes
glowed blue as if there were flame inside. Then it stretched and
grew another five feet in diameter. It smiled at the shock on
Zoey’s face.

“That’s
so
not fair,” said Zoey,
“that’s like
cheating
!”

She searched the ground for a weapon,
remembering something she had read earlier at the academy about
fairies. What was it again—something about how to protect
oneself—but what was it? She yelled out in frustration. She
couldn’t remember. Fear of the dino-fairy was clogging her
memories.

“Ich gruthic se matvis, homen,” said the
fairy, in a guttural voice. It pointed to Zoey with its massive
hand and then gave her a toothy grin.

“I don’t speak Fairy,” said Zoey, wishing
that she could understand it so that she could talk it out of
killing her. “Do you speak English? Does the fact that you’re not
answering mean no? If we could just have a normal conversation, I’m
sure we would all laugh about this later.”

The dino-fairy kept grinning. And then she
thought of something and raised her hands.

“I won’t harm you, I promise. How about we
call this quits, and you can join your furry friends. Truce?”

She was hoping it was a stupid mystic, and
that it hadn’t noticed that her bag was full of its frozen kin.

The fairy frowned and made a fist with its
massive hand and then pointed to her bag. “Ich tactuc se vitan,
homen!” growled the creature.

Zoey swallowed back her fear.

“Okay, so you saw the bag. Guess you’re not
as stupid as you look. Now what?”

She didn’t have to understand its language
to know that it meant to kill her. Just one blow from the
dino-fairy’s powerful fists, and she would be nothing more than a
pile of red jelly. She watched the large fairy carefully.

“And now you’re
drooling
. Well,
that’s just great. You want to eat me too.
Before
or
after
you kill me?”

With a beat of its wings, the dino-fairy
crouched down, and using its weight as momentum it pushed itself in
the air, hovered for a moment, beating its wings furiously—and then
fell back down.

It was too heavy to fly.

“Guess you should have stayed on that diet,
huh?” said Zoey, and then regretted saying it as soon as the words
escaped her mouth.

The dino-fairy beat the air in a rage.

“Toi homen!” it said, and then the ground
shook as the fairy charged at her like a mad rhinoceros.

Knowing the odds were against her, Zoey
stood still until the very last second—and faked to the left. The
dino-fairy stormed past her, too heavy, and with too much momentum
to stop suddenly. Zoey ran in the opposite direction. She raced
across the field and prayed that she wouldn’t trip in the
semi-darkness. The dino-fairy galloped behind her like an
earthquake. She could almost feel the beast’s warm rancid breath on
the back of her neck.

Something pulled at the back of her shirt.
Her feet left the ground, and she soared through the air and
crashed into a wood fence. She gasped for air as she struggled to
get on her feet, but she tripped over her own legs and fell flat on
her face in the mud. Her legs were tangled in wires from the fence.
They wrapped around her legs like metal cobwebs. She was
trapped.

“Ich tactuc se vitan, homen!”

Zoey turned her head.

The dino-fairy stood in front of her with
its fists clenched, and an ugly satisfied smile on its face.

Zoey held its gaze without blinking. She
wasn’t about to let herself become a fairy’s midnight snack. She
struggled with the wires around her wet muddy legs.

Green drool dripped from the corners of the
dino-fairy’s mouth like melted cheese. It was only two feet away
from her now, and its warm rancid breath was choking her, like
hands wrapped tightly around her neck.

A wet laugh escaped from its throat—it was
going to enjoy ripping her to shreds.

Tristan and Simon called out to her, but she
couldn’t see them. They were too far away. It was too late. They
would never reach her in time.

The giant fairy reached out and grabbed Zoey
by the throat. It lifted her so savagely that the force ripped away
the tangled wires around her legs, cutting through her skin like
hot knives. The searing pain blinded her for a moment. She felt
blood seeping down her legs, but she couldn’t even cry out—she
couldn’t breathe. Then the creature’s grip around her throat
lessened, and it threw her down against the ground.

Zoey took dry grasps of air into her lungs,
coughing as the tears rolled down her face. The blood pounded in
her ears, and her heart hammered in her chest as though she had
just run a marathon. Her lips quivered as she took another shaky
breath. She had almost died.

The fairy smiled and laughed at her broken
frame, its eyes full of hatred and excitement. It wanted to play
with her before the kill, like cats did with mice.

She realized that her jeans were soaking wet
with water, not with blood. She had stumbled into a stream. And
then it hit her. Water was a protective agent against fairies.

She remembered—she remembered it all.

She gathered what strength she had left,
picked herself up on shaky legs, and faced the giant beast.

“You want me troll-breath?” she taunted, the
words burning her throat. “Then come and get me.”

With an adrenaline rush, Zoey turned and ran
towards the water in a desperate last attempt to save her life. She
plunged into the stream.

She heard a loud splash behind her and
turned around.

The dino-fairy was charging at her like a
bull through the water.

Why hadn’t the water worked? Had she
remembered it wrong? The blood drained from her face—her plan had
failed. The last of her strength escaped her and she halted.

There was no more point in running anymore.
She stood her ground. She would fight until the end.

Suddenly, the dino-fairy staggered, and its
expression changed to confusion and fear. It turned and tried to
run, but some invisible force deep in the water caught its legs, as
if it were in a bog. It howled in excruciating pain. Blue vapors
steamed around its body as the water burned its skin like acid. It
thrashed and wailed as its skin peeled off like thick orange rinds
and exposed the pink tissue underneath.

With a series of
pops
and
zaps
, the dino-fairy began to shrink in a haze of blue
steam. The stream boiled and sizzled like a pot full of oil. And
then there was nothing left of the giant creature but a little blue
bubble that popped and dissipated in the stream.

“Now that’s what I call
deep-fried
fairy
.”

Simon stood at the edge of the stream with
his cell phone aimed at the remains of the dino-fairy. “Got it all
on film,” he said proudly.

“Too bad I can’t put this on the net, it
would have gone viral in seconds—I would have been famous.”