Mystics 3-Book Collection (20 page)

And in the next moment, the Grohemoth was on
her.

Zoey spun and kicked out as hard as she
could. The Grohemoth went sprawling to the ground, but it scrambled
to its feet, and hissed and spit at her as it advanced again. She
was ready this time.

Zoey stepped to the side and slashed at its
thigh with the end of her boomerang. The creature hissed in pain
but swung its giant foot into her back. She hit the ground hard
enough to knock the wind out of her. She saw the mystic’s mouth
open out of the corner of her eye. Its green tongue waved around
like a mad python.

Zoey rolled and pushed herself up to her
feet just in time to avoid the slimy tongue. She grabbed the
boomerang like a sword and jabbed it into creatures tongue. The
beast wailed and thrashed. Zoey went crashing into a nearby tree.
She hit her head, but her vision cleared in time to see the
Grohemoth dive straight at her again.

Just as the beast was about to crush her
into Zoey-jam, Tristan reached out to her and pulled her to safety.
She fell into his arms and stayed in them for longer than she
should have done, enjoying the comfort. Their eyes met briefly, and
he didn’t let go.

“Guys! Look!” Simon pointed to the waterway.
It was bubbling like a giant cauldron. “Looks like the soup’s
ready.”

Zoey slipped out of Tristan’s arms
awkwardly—only to see about two-dozen more Grohemoths emerge from
the murky waters. Zoey didn’t want to be bait any longer.

“Let’s get out of here!” yelled Tristan.

“That’s the smartest thing you’ve said all
day,” replied Simon, who was already running away.

With a herd of Grohemoths at their heels,
they ran down the moss-covered path. Zoey’s heart thumped in her
throat as she galloped through the wet jungle of trees and
underbrush behind Tristan. Simon followed closely behind—and behind
Simon the ground trembled and trees cracked like a thunderstorm.
They weren’t going to make it.

Agent Vargas had warned her, and she’d
disobeyed. If they didn’t die today, she would surely get kicked
out of the program.

The thumping stopped.

“Guys,” yelled Simon from behind them.
“Guys, look! The stinkers are gone.”

Zoey stopped running and turned. The path
behind them was clear. It was as though they hadn’t even existed.
The swamp was still. Birds chirped and flew from the trees
happily.

“This doesn’t make sense,” said Zoey looking
around. “Why would they just
stop
chasing us? They could
have totally slaughtered us—why would they just stop?”

Once he stopped coughing Simon cradled the
cramp in his side. “I don’t know—and I don’t care. I thought we
were dead. I looked forward to graduating.”

“I know why they stopped coming after us.”
Tristan ducked under a large tree root and came out on the other
side. “Because there’s a wall here. We can’t get through. I think
we may have to go back.”

Zoey slipped under the tree root and came
over beside Tristan. A row of giant black leafless trees was an
ominous mountain in front of them. Although their bark glistened in
the sun like precious jewels, their trunks were twisted together in
a giant mass that blocked the path for miles.

Zoey could glimpse a clearing through the
small gaps between the stumps of the gleaming wall—Troll City—it
had to be. A flutter of excitement passed through her. Her mother
could be somewhere beyond those trees.

“We’re going to get through.”

Zoey fastened her boomerang onto her
bracelet, and then sprinted towards the giant tree wall.

“Zoey! Wait!” yelled Tristan. “Zoey,
stop!”

But Zoey ignored him and ran. She reached
the edged of the trees and started to climb. But her fingers lost
their grip, and she fell back down. The bark was as slippery and
cold as ice. She yelled out in frustration and tried to pull
herself up again. But she lost her footing and fell.

“It’s useless. We’ll never be able to climb
those trees,” said Simon.

He rubbed the tree with his hand. “It’s
almost like the top part of it is made of oil or something. It’s
too bad I didn’t bring my axe. I could have cut it down.”

“You don’t own an axe,” muttered
Tristan.

Zoey got up and kicked the tree. “Stupid
tree!”

Tristan looked around. “We’ll have to go
around it. We don’t have the tools to climb it.”

“And how long is that going to take? It goes
on for miles,” said Zoey exasperated. “I bet the agency already
suspects we’re gone—we left hours ago. They’ll figure out I’ve
disobeyed them when we miss class.”

“We could go back?” suggested Simon. “If we
sneak back now, they might not even notice that we were gone.”

“No,” said Zoey shortly. “I’ve come all this
way. You guys can go back if you want.”

“We’re coming with you,” said Tristan. He
turned to Simon who was strolling back down the path. “Right,
Simon.”

Simon turned around and came walking back
with a look of guilt on his face. “Uh—yeah. Sure—right.”

Zoey turned around and peered through a
break between the trees. “I’m not giving up, not now. My mother may
be here somewhere—I have to find her. She’s there—somewhere down
there in
Troll
City
.”

A loud screeching noise came from the wall
of trees. Zoey and the others jumped back. The massive tree wall
moved. Its trunks drew apart slowly, like tall drapes, until a
section began to open up. It stopped moving with a final
crack
, and Zoey could see that a refrigerator-sized gap had
formed in the colossal tree barrier.

“I guess that was the magic word,” said
Simon looking amazed.

Zoey marveled at the beauty and magic of the
trees, she had never seen anything so marvelous and eerie at the
same. She wished she could stay a while and examine it, but she
pulled herself away and said, “Come on, before it decides to close
us off again.”

Zoey stepped through the gap between the
trunks and popped out to the other side.

She stopped dead in her tracks.

“Guys, where’s the town?”

Simon and Tristan came up behind her. They
looked out over a vast landscape of swampland, hills, and meadows
that stretched out to the horizon—but no town.

“There has to be some mistake. It has to be
here somewhere.”

Zoey circled around, looking for a clue of
some kind. Finally something caught her eye. An old wooden sign was
nailed crookedly onto the back of one of the trees. The sign read,
Troll City,
with a badly painted black arrow pointing
down.

Zoey sighed deeply. “Now what’s that
supposed to mean? We don’t have time for games!” She was starting
to think that this trip might have been a grave mistake, and that
there really was no Troll City. The sign was someone’s idea of a
joke.

Simon tried to twist the sign. “Trolls
aren’t known for their large brains, you know. I bet they wrote it
wrong. Maybe we should keep going straight?”

Zoey yelled out in frustration. She paced
around and kicked the ground. Her foot hit something hard. She
parted the overgrown bush with her shoe and revealed a piece of
flat metal. She fell to her knees and pulled at the weeds that
covered it. When she was done, she stood up and stepped back—it was
a door.

It was made of brass and looked as though it
belonged at the front of some medieval castle—except that it lay
flat on the ground in the middle of the swamp. Symbols and runes
were etched around the door in a language Zoey didn’t recognize.
Spikes and evil looking knobs and hooks decorated most of the
front. The most disturbing part of all was the handle—it was a
brass hand.

“Guess the sign was right after all,” said
Simon as he stood next to Zoey. “Maybe trolls are not as stupid as
we think they are.”

Zoey eyed the hand suspiciously.

“It’s a door—a door in the ground in the
middle of nowhere with a really creepy handle. Do you think it
actually
leads
to somewhere? Have you guys ever heard of
something like this? A door in the ground—can this be real?”

Tristan shook his head and frowned. “I never
did. It’s by far the strangest thing I’ve ever seen.”

“Same here,” answered Simon. “I feel like
I’m in an old black-and-white version of
The
Twilight
Zone
. But they did a good job at hiding it, in case some Mutes
came along.”

“Or agents,” said Zoey. “Well,
we
almost missed it, didn’t we? I guess they didn’t want anyone
finding it. So if that’s true, then this
door
probably does
lead to Troll City. This must be it—I’m sure of it.”

Zoey figured
she
should be the one to
pull open the creepy door. That way, if something bad were to
happen, then it would happen to her and not her friends.

“I’m going first,” said Zoey. She lifted her
hand at Tristan who was about to protest. “This is my plan—my
problem—and if something goes wrong, it’ll be on me.”

Tristan looked alarmed but didn’t say
anything.

Zoey turned her attention back to the
handle. “Okay, creepy mannequin’s hand—here goes nothing.”

She wrapped her hand around the brass-hand
handle. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up—the hand was
warm
. Faster than a blink of an eye, the brass fingers
grasped her hand tightly.

“Ahh!” screamed Zoey. “Get it off me! Get it
off!”

She pulled and pulled, trying to yank her
hand free of the metal hand, but it wouldn’t move. Panic gripped at
her throat like giant hands squeezing the breath out of her. She
was in shock.

Tristan and Simon jumped to her aid and
tried to pry the fingers from her hand.

“They’re not coming off!” said Tristan, his
face red. “Can’t. Lift. Them,” he said breathlessly.

“Oh, this is really bad,” said Simon wiping
the sweat from his brow. “She’s stuck! The stupid handle’s locked!
It won’t move!”

“I know she’s stuck,” yelled Tristan. “Maybe
we can put some mud around her hand, and it’ll help to slip it
out.”

“Yeah, good idea,” agreed Simon. “Mud is
good.”

But Zoey wasn’t listening. She just wanted
the creepy hand off of her. In her panic she started to
hyperventilate. She yanked and pulled, kicked, and finally slipped
and fell to the side.

The door swung open, and the hand released
its grip. Zoey watched the heavy door crash open beside her, lifted
herself up on her elbows, and stole a peek inside.

A stone staircase disappeared into the
shadows below.

But then a series of lights flicked on, and
soon the staircase was illuminated in the gold flames of wall
torches.

Zoey started to breathe normally again. She
swung her legs down into the doorway.

“Zoey, be careful.” Tristan leaned over her.
“We don’t know what’s down there.”

“I will.” Carefully, Zoey climbed down to
the first step.

The stairs were carved from rock and were
steady enough to climb down. She could see the staircase winding
down into shadow below her.

Tristan and Simon climbed down after
her.

After a ten-minute walk, they came to a
platform and another set of stairs going up. They climbed the long
winding staircase for more than half an hour. Zoey’s thighs burned
from the uphill climb. And just when she thought she couldn’t lift
another leg, they finally arrived at the end of the staircase.
Another door with another eerie hand handle stood before them,
except this time the door was black and twice as large.

“These doors are disturbing on purpose,”
said Zoey, eyeing the thick fingers from the handle. “I don’t think
anyone in their right mind would try to open
another
one.”

“Yes, but we’re all
crazy
,” said
Simon. “Crazy to have come here in the first place.”

Zoey paused for a second, catching her
breath.

“Troll City, here we come.” She wrapped her
fingers around the hand —trying not to wince), turned the handle,
and pushed through. The door fell back at once. As she climbed
through the door, she was half blinded by the sudden bright
light.

As her vision adjusted, her senses were on
overdrive. Her skin tingled, and she shivered with the presence of
mystics. It was like when she’d first come to the hive and sensed
the mystics who were stepping in and out of the mirror-ports in the
main hall. Only this time, there were a lot more. She could feel
them.

Simon stumbled out after her. “Oh my God,
I’m blind! I can’t see! Zoey? Tristan? My friends? Is this
heaven?”

“Oh shut up—it’ll go away in a minute.”
Tristan stepped out, rubbing his eyes.

Once the black spots had disappeared from
her eyes, Zoey looked around, and her heart stopped. They stood in
the middle of the most extraordinary town she had ever seen. Rows
of wooden tree houses lined the streets. Other homes and shops were
carved into the side of a great hill, like a giant wall of Swiss
cheese. The city looked as though a madman had designed it.

A series of doors like the ones they had
just climbed through wrapped the edges of the town like a sidewalk.
With a bang, one of the doors swung open, and a long-haired mystic
with striped white and black skin like a zebra climbed out of the
door.

Mystics were everywhere. There were tall
mystics with red scaly skin and necks like giraffes. Others were
short and round with brilliant orange fur and long bushy tails.

Zoey heard the beat of a wing and turned to
see a creature with the head and wings of an eagle, but with the
body of a lion. It landed in a small courtyard behind them. It took
a sudden leap, and there was a flash or orange fur. Zoey was
horrified as she watched one of the small orange mystics disappear
down the griffin’s throat. Around the corner a stout mystic in a
light blue suit carried a briefcase and conversed loudly with a
young mystic who scribbled furiously in a notepad.