Mystics 3-Book Collection (48 page)

“I’ll distract them while you and Tristan
make a run for it,” said Simon, slapping his mustache on again.

“Are you sure?” said Tristan. “I can
distract them—”

“No need, I can do this,” said Simon,
excitedly. “I’m Agent Bond, remember? The good-looking,
resourceful, ever so stylish and charming special agent—everything
I do looks cool.”

Zoey stifled a laugh and prepared herself.
She would have to run past Agent Ward and Director Martin, who
would still be outside the door, ready to wring their necks.

Bracing herself, she yanked the door
open—but there was no one there.

But at the end of the corridor, a group of
agents was under attack.

“
W
ell, looks like
we have bigger problems, just FYI,” said Simon. His mustache fell
off his face again as he watched the battle raging down the
corridor.

“They’ve already found us,” Tristan looked
at Zoey.

Agent Ward screamed.

“Come on, we have to help!” Zoey ran towards
the fight.

Zoey, Simon, and Tristan rushed down to the
end of the corridor and halted.

The main hall was a war zone. Volley after
volley of silver fireballs the size of watermelons blasted past the
agents, who just managed to duck out of the way. They hit the wall
behind them with thundering booms. Plaster chunks fell to the
ground as the wall went up in flames.

The smell of burned flesh and smoke rose all
around them. Another volley of fireballs soared towards them like
flaming arrows. Three agents leaped out of the way, but the fourth
one wasn’t so lucky.

He swung at the fireballs with a gleaming
golden sword. But the sword went right through the burning spheres
like they were water. One of the fiery spheres hit him in the
chest. A look of shock appeared on the man’s face and before he
could scream his body was instantly engulfed in silver flames. It
was as though his flesh and bones were made of mere paper. The
flames consumed him instantly, and his body collapsed to the floor
in a pile of black ash.

At first, Zoey couldn’t see what was
attacking them through the turmoil of agents and smoke. She thought
it might be more Daragons, like the dragon beasts that they had
fought back at Agency headquarters. But she remembered Daragon fire
being an orange-red color, not silver.

Then she heard the clanking of hooves
hitting the floor. What was attacking the agents?

More agents rushed past them, shouting
orders in a state of total panic.

And then Zoey saw them.

Five headless men riding great black steeds
came galloping into the main hall. The huge horses were midnight
black, with gleaming silver eyes and sharp pointy teeth, unlike any
horses Zoey had ever seen. Sweat rippled across their muscled
bodies, and their nostrils flared aggressively. Silver fire rose
around them like mist.

Their riders had bloody stumps where their
heads should have been. They were identically dressed in long black
coats with silver crests on the sleeves. Their capes rippled out
behind them as they rode like great wings, and they wielded flaming
silver swords in their large gauntlet-covered hands.

Zoey wondered how they could see without
their heads.

One of the headless riders stretched out his
free hand, and a silver fireball emerged above his palm like magic.
The fireball opened eyes that blazed with silver fire. The
fireballs were the horsemen’s heads!

Zoey forgot to breathe.

The head looked around for a moment and
sneered. Its mouth was full of pointy teeth like a cat.

Zoey choked on the heat and the smell of
rotten flesh.

The three remaining agents scrambled towards
Zoey - but too late. A horseman galloped in a blur of speed and
positioned himself between Zoey and the agents. He brandished his
sword and severed the agents’ heads in one powerful swing. Their
bodies crumpled to the ground.

Zoey and the others flattened themselves
against the wall, and the horse trotted by them so closely that she
could smell the rot from its body. She couldn’t tell if the smell
came from the horseman or his horse. Probably both.

The horseman wiped his blade on his leg. For
a horrible moment, she thought he had spotted them, but the horse
finally turned and made its way back to the other horsemen.

Tristan turned to Zoey.
“The Headless Horsemen,” he said in a low voice, “Rank Twelve
mystics. I’ve never thought I’d actually
see
one.” He turned his attention
back on the scene.

“You say that like it’s a good thing,” she
whispered back.

Zoey knew that Rank Twelve mystics were the
worst and most dangerous. She had no idea how to defeat even one,
and there were five of them.

Tristan reached inside his
jacket and pulled out an S9 Pro slingshot and a small dagger.
“It’s
not
a good
thing,” he whispered. “In fact, it’s the complete opposite of a
good thing.”

He then pulled out Zoey’s golden boomerang
and handed it to her. “Thought you might want this. I grabbed it
from your room.”

Zoey cringed at the thought of Tristan in
her messy bedroom.

“Thank you. I’m glad to see my little friend
again.” She grasped it firmly in her right hand.

The headless horsemen sat straight in their
saddles, their stallions slashing their tails impatiently. It was
impossible to tell if they knew that Zoey and her friends were
hiding on the fringes of the battle.

“I don’t think our weapons are going to be
very useful against the horsemen,” said Tristan, “but you never
know, we might get lucky.”

Simon held out his caterpillar-looking
mustache to Tristan. “If I don’t make it - you can keep my furry
friend.”

Tristan made a face. “I’ll pass,
thanks.”

Simon shrugged, “Suit yourself.” He pressed
his mustache back under his nose.

Zoey watched as the horsemen formed a line
and waited. “Do they have a weakness? There must be something we
can try that’ll slow them down?”

At that moment, one of the heads seemed to
have heard her and turned slowly towards her in the palm of the
horseman’s outstretched hand. Its unblinking eyes were fixed on
her. She resisted the urge to shiver. She turned to Simon and
Tristan, but they both shrugged.

“Watch out!”

Tristan pulled Simon and Zoey to the ground.
Heat grazed the top of Zoey’s head as she hit the cold marble
floor, smashing her knee into the stone. She ignored the pain and
looked up to see that the wall behind the spot where she had been
standing a second ago had a great hole in it and was ablaze in
silver fire.

The five horsemen raised their swords and
steered their great steeds towards her. The horses screeched like
banshees.

“Well, it was nice knowing you, guys,” said
Simon. He armed his slingshot with a metal pellet. “Make sure
someone feeds my goldfish.”

Zoey raised her boomerang, her heart
hammering like a drum. “Nobody’s dying today. Here they come, get
ready.”

The five headless horsemen charged. The
ground shook. Zoey swallowed. She raised her boomerang—

“HORSEMEN!” Voices called.

Agent Barnes and Agent Lee stood in the main
hall behind the horsemen. The horsemen turned away from the kids,
changed their course and faced the oncoming agents.

“What do we have here, Agent Lee?” Agent
Barnes strode confidently towards the horsemen.

“It’s the
brainless
horsemen.
Haven’t seen the likes of them in quite some time. Weren’t you guys
off doing a movie or something?”

Agent Lee pulled a giant gun from the pleats
of his long coat. “Five against two. I like those odds.”

“Now you’re talking,” said Agent Barnes.

He shouted to them, “Hey,
instead of hunting little kids, how about a real challenge with
some muscle? Unless you’re too
scared
. But maybe you don’t even
understand what I’m saying. Must be hard for you to fathom the
words without heads. Am I right?”

The steeds bucked, and even though they had
no faces, Zoey could tell by the tension in their bodies that the
horsemen didn’t like to be insulted.

Agent Barnes met Zoey’s eyes and motioned
behind him. She nodded that she understood.

He smiled and raised a
double-barreled shotgun with a blue
glass barrel on the
top.

“So what do you say, eh?
Do you need some time to put your
heads
together to come up with a
plan?” He laughed at his own joke.

The horsemen outstretched their hands, and
five fiery silver heads appeared in their palms.

“Is that supposed to impress us?” mocked
Agent Barnes. “Oooh. You can make fire-heads appear in your hands.”
He sneered wickedly. “We can make fire, too!”

Both Agent Barnes and Agent Lee fired.

Zoey was expecting to see liquid fire come
from the barrels of the guns. But instead, lashes of electric blue
lightning flashed towards the horsemen. The first two horsemen fell
off their horses, and their bodies sizzled in blue current. While
the fallen horsemen struggled to their feet, the other three hurled
their heads at the agents.

“INCOMING!” Agent Barnes and Lee rolled out
of the way, just as the three silver fireballs came hurtling past
them and scorched the wall behind them completely black.

Zoey grabbed hold of Tristan and Simon.
“Come on, let’s get out of here.”

She didn’t have to convince them. They
sneaked around the back of the horsemen and sprinted for the front
doors. They ran through the smoke and debris, and - to Zoey’s
horror - a few more piles of black ashes. When they got to the
door, she turned around. Agent Barnes and Agent Lee were in full
combat against five horsemen. They fired their guns, and the
horsemen fell, but they always got up. The Rank Twelve mystics were
hard-core, and she wondered if anyone could defeat such foes. If
the agents’ special guns couldn’t defeat them, then what would?

Zoey pushed open the front doors and ran out
into the cold. She froze in her tracks.

Thirty headless horsemen were engaged in
battle and trying to push their way into the Hive. Twenty
well-disciplined agents stood, lined up like a wall, and were doing
their best to repel the attacks. But Zoey quickly noticed more dead
bodies and piles of ashes. The headless horsemen were throwing
everything they had at the Hive’s defenses, but the defenders kept
repelling their attacks and forcing them back.

A cry broke above the clamor of battle.

Zoey’s blood turned to ice. It was Aria.

Without thinking, Zoey ran wildly towards
the scream. She heard Tristan screaming her name but ignored him.
Aria was in trouble. She ran in desperation to save one of the only
people she loved. They couldn’t take Aria away from her. She would
kill them all.

She spotted Aria cowering against a car in
the parking lot. She was bleeding from a large gash on her side. A
headless horseman towered above her, his sword at her throat.

“LEAVE HER ALONE!”

Zoey hurled her boomerang. It shot through
the air like a bullet and made contact with the horseman’s sword.
The sword slipped out of his hand and landed in the snow.

The horseman steered his horse away from
Aria and towards Zoey. He stood in silence and stared at her.

“Zoey, no!” cried Aria. “What are you doing?
Get out of here!”

Zoey planted her feet in the snow, reached
up, and caught her ricocheting boomerang easily. Even though it was
the dead of winter, she felt like she was on fire. She wanted to
kill the creature more than anything in the world. She felt wild
and fearless.

And then the horseman did something
unexpected. He dismounted.

He searched the ground and pulled his
blazing silver sword from a heap of snow. He lifted it up in front
of his chest as if in a salute, and then marched through the snow
towards Zoey. He waved his sword back and forth as he came towards
her, as though he was cutting an invisible path.

“Zoey, no!” cried Aria desperately, but Zoey
didn’t really hear her. All she heard was the pounding of her own
heart in her ears.

The horseman was so close that she could
smell the filth from his rotten flesh. He raised his sword like an
executioner and swung it down in a powerful downward arc towards
Zoey’s head. She waited till the last second, then ducked and
rolled out of the way. The blade hissed by her ear as she spun
around. Another giant swing came at her. She leaped out of the way
again, but she was not fast enough.

Fire cut into her skin, and she screamed. It
was like someone had poured acid on her arm. Black spots obscured
her vision momentarily, and she felt dizzy from the pain. She
blinked. Blood ran from the gash in her arm to her fingers and
turned her hand into a red glove.

She knew she’d die if she stayed where she
was, and her instincts kicked in. As the horseman lifted his sword
for another strike, she drove her boot into his knee. He faltered
for a moment. She shook off the pain. She knew she needed to kill
him. But how?

The horseman swung again, and she parried
with her boomerang and knocked him off balance. He struck again,
and the weight of his sword knocked her down. She fell, rolled, and
came up to parry his strikes with the edge of her boomerang. Every
time he struck she felt the strain in her arms. She couldn’t keep
this up much longer.

The horseman slashed again. Her boomerang
collided with the sword with the loud clatter of metal hitting
metal, and it deflected the blade for a second. But not long
enough.