Mystics 3-Book Collection (19 page)

“We don’t have much time,” she said catching
her breath. “There’s an agent patrolling the corridors. I
distracted him, but he’ll be back any second.”

“Oh, man, we’re going to get caught!” whined
Simon.

“SHHH!” Tristan put a hand on Simon’s
mouth.

“Quiet,” he said in a whisper and then let
him go.

Zoey surveyed the end of the hallway. “The
coast is clear,” she whispered. “He didn’t hear
us
,”—she
glowered at Simon—“But we have to hurry. We need to find the mirror
that will get us to Troll City.”

With Tristan and Simon on the left side, and
Zoey on the right, the three of them began to examine the walls of
mirrors, searching for the one they needed. Within seconds she
found an inscription that read,
United States of America
.
She knew that Louisiana was a southern state. This was the one.

“Found it,” she said. Tristan and Simon
moved next to her. She glanced at her friends, trying not to look
as excited as she felt.

“Ready? You guys ready? It’s now or
never.”

“You sure this is going to work?” asked
Simon nervously. “I mean—maybe they don’t have a mirror-port anchor
in Troll City? It makes sense. They hate us there anyway. What if
we mirror-port into the mouth of a giant angry mystic? Have you
thought of that?”

“We’re not going to mirror-port into the
mouth of some giant mystic. The mirror should be able to tell us
right away.”

Zoey stepped up to the side panel and
typed:

Troll City, Louisiana, USA
.

She waited—her stomach in knots—she didn’t
trust herself to look at Tristan or Simon. What if Simon was right?
What if Troll City didn’t have an anchor? How would she ever get
there? It’s not like she had any money to take a bus or an
airplane.

Before she could have a panic attack, there
was a sudden
buzzing,
and then the green light came on above
the mirror with a
click
. The mirror hummed softly. The
inside glowed with silver light and rippled like tiny waves on a
pond.

“It actually worked?” said Tristan
inspecting the mirror.

He didn’t realize how loud his voice
resonated in the hallway. “I had my doubts. I didn’t think the
agency would even have a mirror-port to
that
city.”

“But they did.” Zoey exhaled. “You guys
ready?”

“HEY! YOU THERE! STOP!”

The young agent came running at top speed.
His face was flushed, and he looked very angry.

“People—” said Simon, with a hint of tension
in his voice, “—if we don’t move now, this charming young fella is
going to get us.”

“It’s now or never,” said Zoey excitedly.
“You can still back out—it’s not too late.”

“Never,” said Tristan, “We’re coming.”

“Then come on!” Without another second to
lose, Zoey climbed into the mirror and vanished from the great
hall.

A
second later,
Zoey stood in a swamp area with moss-draped trees and shallow
waterways. The trees were tall and curved with roots like knees
that grew out from the trunk above the high water level. The humid
air felt like a hot shower. Birds chirped happily and rays of
sunlight escaped through breaks between the moss-covered branches.
The waterways curved around small islands of muck and thick green
vegetation.

The waters moved. Zoey froze, her breath
caught in her throat. Was that an alligator?

Then something hard crashed into her back,
and she fell face first into the mucky ground. She lifted her head
and spit frog-smelling earth from her mouth.

“That is
so
gross.”

“Sorry,” laughed Simon as he rolled off
Zoey. “But thanks for the soft landing.”

“You’re welcome,” growled Zoey. She spit
more of the grimy earth from her mouth.

“Here, take my hand.” Tristan helped Zoey to
her feet.

Zoey wiped her face clean with her sleeve.
She didn’t want to think about what she had tasted on her tongue.
Her jeans and t-shirt had great brown and green stains like she had
rolled in the mud for fun. It was not at all what she had wanted to
look like for her first encounter with her mother. But it was too
late to go get changed now—her stinky self would have to do. She
had half the notion to ask Simon for
his
clean t-shirt, but
decided against it.

Behind her, an old dresser mirror was nailed
to the trunk of a great tree. The edges were cracked, and it was
streaked with yellow and rusted stains like a mirror you would find
in an old antique shop. Zoey pointed to it. “There’s the anchor. So
agents
have
been here before.”

“Looks like it,” agreed Tristan. “Or just
other Sevenths.”

Zoey inspected the mirror more closely. “Do
you think they still use it in secret? From what Agent Vargas was
saying—I didn’t think they’d be coming anywhere near this
place.”

“Maybe just to keep tabs on the mystics,”
said Simon. “We still need to monitor them—to make sure they’re
following the rules like the rest of us.”

“But we’re
breaking
the rules.” Zoey
smiled.

“Look, I think there’s a path over there.”
Tristan pointed to a break in the trees. It opened to a path of
leaves and green mosses, and led away from the anchor. “Let’s
follow it.”

Zoey went first. The path followed a dark
green waterway. It made her feel uneasy, like anything could be
lurking underneath. They moved quietly because their footsteps were
absorbed by the soft vegetation, and Zoey felt like she was walking
into some sort of fantasyland. The air was still and thick. Sweat
trickled down her back, and she began to think that perhaps she had
overdressed.

“So what are you going to say to her, if you
find Elizabeth?” asked Tristan, breaking the silence.

Zoey stepped over a dead tree carefully.

“I don’t know. I haven’t thought that far
yet.” Her stomach tightened at the thought.

What
would
she say? What if her
mother didn’t even
want
to see her? Secretly, that was her
worst fear— that her parents had abandoned her fourteen years ago
because they didn’t
want
her. She forced the thought out of
her head and kept moving.

As they walked in silence, Tristan kept
giving her looks, like he was trying to start up a conversation.
But each time he opened his mouth, he would shut it again and look
away with a frustrated expression. She knew she shouldn’t dwell on
Tristan’s behavior too much. The truth was that she wasn’t entirely
sure how she felt about him.

After about a half hour of walking, they
could still see no end to the path. It seemed to go on forever. And
the bugs were having a fiesta with their blood.

Smack!

“I swear these are vampire mosquitoes.
They’re
ginormous
,” said Simon as he squished another bug
into a smear of blood between his eyebrows.

“These are not the
normal
mosquitoes
we have back home. I think they’re genetically engineered—like the
African killer bees I saw on a report on the National Geographic
channel. I’m going to get sick. I’m going to get malaria.”

“You’re not going to get malaria,” said
Tristan lazily, and rolled his eyes at Zoey who laughed.

“How would you know?” Simon pointed to a
large mosquito on his arm.

“Look! Look at the girth of this
thing—that’s no regular mosquito! That’s like the
Bigfoot
of
mosquitoes—these are bloodsucking man-eaters.”

“Just keep moving and close your mouth,”
said Zoey with a twinkle in her eye. “You wouldn’t want to inhale
any of them—”

A splash came from the stream.

Zoey stopped and looked over at the water.
The circular ripple dissipated, and the water was still again.
There was nothing there. But her seventh sense didn’t lie, and her
skin was riddled in goose bumps.

“What is it?” Tristan stood next to her
eyeing the water. “I don’t see anything. And I’m not getting any
senses either.”

Zoey shook her head. “I don’t know. I
thought I heard a splash or something coming from the water—and I
felt
something—I’m sure of it.”

“Well, I don’t see, sense, or hear
anything,” said Simon looking over Zoey’s shoulder. “You’re sure
you don’t have mosquitoes in your ears? Hang on—I think I see one
of them in there.”

Zoey smacked Simon’s hand. “Hey! Don’t put
your finger in my ear! You’re totally crazy.”

“That’s what I keep telling people,” said
Simon proudly.

Tristan turned away from the water. “Well,
whatever it was, it’s gone now. Let’s keep moving.”

Splash. Gallooop!

Zoey and the others froze.

“I heard that,” whispered Simon. “What was
it?”

The waters around them exploded.

A gigantic creature rose out of the murky
waters and heaved itself onto shore.

It looked like a mixture between a frog and
fish, with scales and slimy looking green skin. It had huge bulbous
eyes and a globular head with a large gaping mouth. Vegetation and
moss sprouted from its back, like protective armor, and frogs and
other slimy creatures slid off of its back as though it were
shedding. It was the size of a hippopotamus, and its wet yellow
eyes glared at them with hatred.

Simon bent down and grabbed a stick.

“Hey doggy, doggy, that’s a good boy. You
want the stick? Do ya? Here, go fetch.” He tossed the stick into
the swamp.

The creature’s eyes didn’t move.

“It’s not a dog, stupid,” said Tristan in a
low voice.

“I know that,” snapped Simon, “but no one
else was doing anything!”

“What
is
it?” asked Zoey, the
creature’s stare was making her feel uneasy.

“It’s a Grohemoth, a swamp mystic,” said
Tristan. “They’re from a herd group, which means there’s a lot more
out there.”

“That’s just great. Is it a friend or a
hostile?”

“Hostile.”

“Figures,” said Zoey. She screwed up her
face. “Yuck, can you smell that?”

“Sorry, I had chili for lunch,” said Simon,
with a lopsided grin.

Zoey pretended she hadn’t heard what he just
said. “No—I mean the creature. It smells like a public toilet.”

With another splash two more identical
Grohemoths heaved themselves out of the swamp. The swamp creatures
quickly circled around them and boxed them in. Before they knew it,
they were trapped. They would have to fight their way out.

“Oh goody, now we have one for each of us.”
Tristan pulled out his S9 slingshot and armed it with a miniature
wooden arrow that looked homemade.

“Stand back to back, and stick
together.”

Zoey’s eyes watered as the onion smelling
gas from the beasts burned her retinas. She blinked through her
tears. The Grohemoths watched without blinking.

“Well, it was nice knowing you guys,” said
Simon. “I was really hoping to graduate to agent in a few
years—I’ve been working on my speech—you want to hear it?”

“Not right now, no.” Zoey unfastened her
boomerang, flipped it open, and aimed it at the nearest
Grohemoth.

“We’re going to make it. I’m not letting
these giant freak salamanders kill us.”

The creatures seemed to understand her, and
with a wet growl the three Grohemoths attacked.

Tristan fired first.

His short arrow punctured a charging beast’s
eye. The eye exploded in a yellow liquid, like egg yolk, and the
beast wailed in pain and went sprawling.

Simon loaded his slingshot with a steel ball
and fired at the second Grohemoth—but he missed the target by five
feet.

“Ooops,” Simon pointed at the beast. “You
can’t blame me for that. The thing moved! I swear.”

Zoey hurled her boomerang and hit the
creature in the head with such brute force that it collapsed on the
wet ground like a dead tree. The gold boomerang glittered in the
sun’s rays as it ricocheted back to Zoey.

The third Grohemoth leaped over its stunned
brethren. It dove at them like a giant whale, ready to swallow them
whole.

Both Zoey and Tristan fired at the same
time.

Tristan’s arrow perforated the creature’s
abdomen, and Zoey’s boomerang hit its massive neck with a sickening
crack—but the beast didn’t flinch and kept coming.

“MOVE!” Tristan pushed Zoey and Simon out of
the way, but he collided with the great mystic himself and
disappeared underneath it.

“Tristan!” Zoey caught her boomerang and
then started forward to help him, but her right foot was stuck.

She was yanked hard to the ground by a green
tongue that was wrapped around her ankle. It pulled her at a
frightening speed towards the great wet mouth of the Grohemoth she
thought she had already killed. Its yellow eyes widened with
delight as it dragged her closer—she thought she could almost see
it smile.

She could hear Tristan yelling, and the
sound of fists hitting flesh.

She grabbed at the soft ground, desperate to
stop herself, but it was no use. She tried to pry the tongue from
her ankle, but her fingers kept slipping, and she couldn’t get a
decent hold. In seconds she would be frog-meat or salamander-meat,
whatever it was. She was too close to it. She needed more space to
throw her boomerang.

The great mouth opened wider, and she stared
inside it helplessly.

She did the only thing that she could. She
grabbed her boomerang so that the opposite wing pointed out like a
dagger and stabbed into the soft flesh inside the beast’s enormous
mouth. Green blood spurted into her face, blinding her, and the
Grohemoth let go with a howl of pain. Zoey jumped back and wiped
her eyes with her sleeve. Much to her horror, she had only angered
it more. It lunged again.

Zoey threw her boomerang, but the Grohemoth
saw it just in time and ducked. The boomerang missed, circled back,
and she caught it. Without stopping, she shot it again. This time
the creature dodged it easily, as though it sensed where the
boomerang was going to go.