Mystics 3-Book Collection (33 page)

Zoey’s insides twisted. What did Mrs. Dupont
know about her already—about her past—about her mother?

“Those are their names,” Zoey lied again.
“Mom and dad St. John—I think they’re swell names, don’t you? And
why do you care, anyway? What do my parents have to do with any of
this?”

“Plenty,” said Mrs. Dupont. Her voice was
sharp, and all the traces of false gentleness were gone.

“I know you’re lying, I can always tell when
someone is lying. You might call it a gift. I can see the lies and
fear in your eyes. I see it all. I can even see your desperation to
keep your mother safe. But you can’t.”

Zoey’s heart thumped wildly.

Suddenly, Mrs. Dupont’s face warped
grotesquely in anger. She reached out and wrenched Zoey’s right arm
painfully.

“Where
is
your mother? Where is
Elizabeth?” she roared. Her spit flew in Zoey’s face.

Zoey cried out, “I don’t know who you’re
talking about? I don’t know anyone called Elizabeth. I swear.”

“LIAR!” Mrs. Dupont twisted Zoey’s arm so
forcefully that Zoey heard a horrible snap.

Zoey sunk to the ground, her head spinning
from the searing pain. She blinked the black spots and tears from
her eyes. Her arm lay limp by her side, and panic rose like a cold
mist in her mind. She shuddered. She tried to stand, but just
moving her leg made her cry out. She was too weak to fight
back.

She knew that after Mrs. Dupont had gotten
the information she wanted, they would kill her. That she knew for
certain.

She inhaled shaky breaths and tried to calm
herself. They could kill her, but they couldn’t harm her mother if
they didn’t know where she was—she took comfort in that.

Mrs. Dupont leaned over Zoey. Her face was
flushed and clammy, like a store mannequin whose face had melted
from the heat of overhead lights.

“Fortunately for you,” she said, spraying
Zoey’s face with more disgusting warm spit, “I don’t have time for
this now. But rest assured, I will
deal
with you later. I
will get some answers out of you—even if I have to cut your pretty
little fingers off one by one—you
will
tell me where she’s
hiding eventually. I can promise you that.”

Zoey cradled her injured arm. “And I promise
I
won’t
tell you anything.”

Zoey could see the interloper clearly now.
She was so close that she could reach out and touch it.

Mrs. Dupont caught her looking at the
interloper, and a smile contorted her face again.

“You’d like this, wouldn’t you?”

Zoey didn’t answer, so Mrs. Dupont
continued.

“Do you know what this is?”

She held the interloper for Zoey to see.

“This is the interloper you’ve been
thinking
about— the answer—the way to restore the balance
between the worlds to what it was in the time of the Originals. The
world of beasts and monsters shouldn’t mix with ours. It dishonors
the Originals. We are the superior race, and we should
rule
the beasts, not coexist with them.”

“The balance is shifting in the Nexus, Zoey.
A powerful demon warlord is poised to invade our dimension with his
savage army. He is at war in his own world and angry that the
agents drove him out from this world centuries ago. So, we made a
deal. We’ll open the portal to our world to let his army in—and
he’ll get rid of the agency for us. He will come with a vengeance,
and every last agent will die. Then the Alpha Nation, the true
followers of the Originals, will rise and rule this world.”

“It won’t work,” said Zoey, trying to ignore
the throbbing pain in her arm. “They’ll stop you.”

Even though her throwing arm was broken,
Zoey wished she still had her boomerang.

Mrs. Dupont laughed.

“Who? Who will stop me, my dear girl—the
agency? Ha! Look around you, Zoey—the agency has fallen. The
mystics you love so much will destroy the rest of you tonight.
There is no one here to help you. The Alphas killed them all.
You’re all that’s left.”

Zoey remembered the bodies she had seen in
the auditorium, and she felt sick. She knew that whatever Mrs.
Dupont was planning was going to be a million times worse. Hot rage
boiled inside her. The cat-face woman had to be stopped. But
how?

“Sylvester,” said Mrs. Dupont, “Give me the
other interloper. It’s time.”

She held out her hand, and Agent Stokes
pulled the other interloper from the folds of his jacket. Much to
his disappointment, she gave it to Nazar.

“Why does
he
get to use it?” said
Agent Stokes, outraged. “
I’m
the one who took it from Agent
Barnes. I’m the one who went through all the trouble to get it! I’m
the one who got you the codes to break into the agency’s
headquarters. I nearly got caught! He didn’t
do
anything!”

Nazar caressed the interloper. “Stop your
whining, Sylvester.”

He gave Agent Stokes a self-satisfying grin.
“Did you really think Mrs. Dupont would let
you
work it?
You—a common, good for nothing agent—a man as incompetent as a
monkey? I think not.”

“But…” Agent Stokes was lost for words. “—I
don’t understand. I let you in to the Boston hive. I was the one
who got you past security. I risked my neck getting those
codes!”

“And we thank you for all your help,
Agent
.” Something gray flashed from the folds of Nazar’s
coat, and in an instant he stabbed Agent Stokes in the chest. Agent
Stokes opened his mouth, choking on his blood, and then slumped to
the ground.

Nazar smiled wickedly at the horror on
Zoey’s face. She bit her tongue and said nothing.

“Let us begin,” said Mrs. Dupont.

She guided Nazar to the edge of the roof.
They stood side by side like a bride and groom holding the metal
cubes like flower bouquets.

Mrs. Dupont turned towards Zoey. Her
cat-like features were amplified disturbingly in the growing
darkness. “It’s not every day you get to witness a portal this
size. You are a very lucky girl, Zoey St. John.”

“I don’t feel very lucky,” answered Zoey
shortly. Her arm throbbed painfully.

Mrs. Dupont laughed. “Oh, but you are
lucky—
very
lucky—lucky that I’ve finally
found
you.”

“What? What is that supposed to mean? We’ve
never even met before?” Zoey hated the triumphant look in her crazy
cat’s eyes. What was it that she knew?

Mrs. Dupont smiled at Zoey’s distress.

“I’ve been searching for you for fourteen
years. Elizabeth thought she could hide you from me, but she was
wrong—and now I’ve found you.”

The puzzle of Zoey’s life started to make
sense. Her mother
hadn’t
abandoned her—she had hidden her
away in the orphanage to save her from this woman and the Alpha
Nation. But why was she so important—what did Mrs. Dupont want with
her? And if Elizabeth Steele was her mother, then who was her
father?

Mrs. Dupont nodded to Nazar, and together
they pressed down on the interlopers with their thumbs. The cubes
began to glow with a brilliant white light.

Zoey had to act now. She looked around the
roof for something to help her. She could see
Caution High
Voltage
written in bold red letters on a large metal panel that
was fastened to the side of the air conditioning unit on the
opposite side of the roof. It gave her an idea.

Movement caught her eye. Tristan and Simon
dodged behind the other air conditioners. They were alive. Simon
held her golden boomerang in his hand. She made sure Mrs. Dupont
and Nazar hadn’t seen them, pressed her finger to her lips, and
motioned for them to come closer.

They made it to the air conditioning unit
closest to her. She met Tristan’s eyes for a second, and ignoring
the weird feeling she felt in her chest, she pointed to their
slingshots, and to Mrs. Dupont and Nazar. Then she pointed to the
panel with the high voltage sign. She sucked at charades. She hoped
they understood.

They both nodded—thank God.

Tristan and Simon aimed their slingshots,
but the roof trembled, and they lost their balance for a
moment.

A shadow passed above them. Zoey looked
up.

Thunder boomed and lightning turned the sky
into daylight. Zoey thought her eyes were playing tricks on her—a
black line appeared in the sky above them. The line got bigger and
bigger, until it was like a second black horizon line across the
London sky. She watched in horror. The line widened, like a giant
movie screen unfurling, until it became a giant black
rectangle.

And then she saw something that made her
blood freeze.

Inside the rectangle was another world, a
red world of wind and rain and fire. An otherworldly landscape of
vast deserts spread out for miles inside the rectangle. She could
see giant volcanic mountains billowing brilliant red smoke over a
blanched plain. Black ash rained down, and plumes of smoke and
steam rose from the burning ground.

And then she saw tens of thousands of evil
looking mystics charging through the smoke towards the mouth of the
portal.

It was a savage army of giants with three
heads, mutated humanoids with animal limbs, and decomposed
human-like undead running with their rotting limbs falling behind
them. Creatures like mummified corpses ran towards her with their
skin hanging in loose folds from their bodies. An immense
translucent worm with two ominously long tentacles slithered to the
mouth of the portal beside hundreds of monstrous spiders with small
humanlike arms below their mandibles. Creatures that resembled
gigantic floating eyeballs shot out towards her followed by
skeletal humanoids clad in metal armor riding on huge flies.

The creatures clawed savagely at each other,
racing to enter her world before the portal closed. Their numbers
overwhelmed her. No one could defeat such an army. The howling
mystics cascaded down into the streets of London like a tidal
wave.

Mrs. Dupont laughed triumphantly. She lifted
the interloper above her head like an offering to a God. Her
twisted features were contorted in madness.

Zoey signaled to Tristan and Simon. They
took aim and fired.

A metal ball hit Mrs. Dupont on the side of
her temple. She crumpled to the ground, and her interloper slipped
from her hands and dropped to the ground.

Nazar was struck in the back of the neck,
and he stumbled to one knee—but he still hung to the
interloper.

Zoey staggered forward, the adrenaline in
her veins feeding her with renewed energy. Every step was
agonizing, but she forced herself to ignore the pain and strained
on. Roars erupted above her as more hostile mystics surged towards
the portal, but she didn’t look up.

Her broken arm seared in pain as she picked
up Mrs. Dupont’s interloper. Then she shuffled towards Nazar. She
kicked his hand awkwardly, and the interloper fell from of his
grip. She clasped both interlopers clumsily to her chest and
hobbled as fast as she could towards the other side of the
roof.

“STOP HER!” bellowed Mrs. Dupont.

Nazar was on his feet. And faster than she
would have liked, he was nearly upon her.

Zoey shuffled towards the high voltage sign.
She could feel Nazar reaching out behind her, about to grab her.
Simon and Tristan fired at Nazar, but he ducked and the metal balls
rocketed off the roof. They shot at him again, hitting him in the
chest and arm with satisfying
cracks
—but he kept coming.

Just as Zoey’s energy was about to run out,
she reached the electrical panel.

“God, I hope this works.”

She kicked it open. Blue sparks shot at her,
and she jumped back. Electric charges danced dangerously around the
wires like venomous snakes.

She swallowed hard. “Here goes nothing.”

“NO!” screamed Mrs. Dupont. “STOP HER! KILL
HER!”

Zoey tossed the cubes onto the wires, just
as Nazar’s hands wrapped around her neck. She opened her mouth to
scream, but Nazar squeezed harder, and she felt her last breath
escape. She knew she was going to die.

She thought she heard Tristan calling her
name. It sounded like she was underwater. Her arms hung at her
sides like dead branches. She looked away from Nazar’s murderous
smile and caught sight of the interlopers. For a second nothing
happened. Then the blue electric current coiled around them, and
the interlopers’ lights grew steadily brighter, until they were
both white hot. Then they exploded.

The force of the blow caught Zoey in the
chest. She and Nazar flew into the air. He lost his grip on her,
and she drew in a desperate breath. She crashed brutally into the
wall on the edge of the roof and felt something snap. She couldn’t
feel her legs or her arms, and warm liquid seeped from the back of
her head. Her ears rang, and she knew was dying. Her body was
broken.

With the last of her strength she watched
the portal shimmer and split apart. Like a mist blowing in the
wind, the black rectangle flickered and disappeared. The last
things she saw were the angry faces of the mystics staring down at
her from above.

She closed her eyes and let the darkness
take her.

B
uildings burned.
Mystic and human bodies littered the streets of London. The air was
hot and Zoey fought to breathe in the hot smoky air. Mutes ran
screaming past her as they tried to escape their invisible enemies.
Zoey watched a giant flying insect swoop down on them as they
crowded the narrow streets. They couldn’t fight back. They couldn’t
see the threat.

But Zoey could see the creatures. She had to
help.

A blast of blue light hit the giant insect,
and it crashed into the window of a burning building. A group of
humans who could see them fought the creatures. All was not
lost.