Mystics 3-Book Collection (74 page)

A group of twenty fur-covered little mystics
in t-shirts and jeans came towards them. They looked like ugly
children with beards. They flexed the black talons on their grubby
little fingers, and their red eyes glowed with hatred and
excitement. They were as cute and cuddly as hungry panthers.

Zoey exchanged a worried look with Tristan
and Simon and then moved and made a protective wall in front of
Agent Franken.

The hairy babies circled around them.

“I feel like I’m in a Halloween Pampers
commercial,” said Simon, breathing heavily.

“Does anybody know what these things are?
I’m not sure whether to whack them with my sling shot or offer them
milk.”

Agent Franken opened his mouth,
“They’re—”

“Werewolves,” said one of the ugly babies in
a chipmunk sort of voice. He had a white tuft of fur on the top of
his head like a Mohawk. “There’s nothing more we hate than Agent
cubs
. And here you are . . . in
our
territory.”

Zoey couldn’t help herself. Maybe it was her
nerves, but she started laughing.

“Werewolves? You can’t possibly be
werewolves
! Werewolves are big and super strong and . . .”
She looked at them again questioningly, “. . . and a lot
older
. You guys are like tiny little furry babies—”

“Babies!” said one of the miniature
werewolves in that same kind of chipmunk voice, as if it had
inhaled some helium balloons. “Who you callin’ babies? You’re the
ones that look like babies. You’re cubs. We could smell you a mile
away.”

The mystic sneered, its mouth full of sharp
teeth. It wore a yellow t-shirt that said: BITE ME.

“Young meat is the most tender,” said
another werewolf. “. . . So juicy and warm, it melts in your mouth.
I’m going to get me a piece of the blond. He looks
tasty
.”

Simon looked offended. “What? No way. No
one’s eating me, furball.”

“We’ll see about that,” said the werewolf
with the white Mohawk.

Zoey couldn’t see any females among them.
And the other Alphas avoided them, like they were afraid of the
werewolves or had been told by someone
not
to interfere.

“Mrs. Dupont sent you, didn’t she?” pressed
Zoey.

She looked up towards the big house on the
hillside. “Thought she’d try and get rid of us before we reached
the portal. Well, we’re not giving up so easily.”

“Yeah,” said Simon. “We’re OSC. We can take
care of a few gremlins.”

“This is werewolf territory,” said the
werewolf leader. “I’ve
marked
it—”

“What do you mean you’ve
marked
it?”
asked Simon, and then made a face when he realized what the little
wolf-man meant. “. . . That’s disgusting and unsanitary. Do you
know how many diseases you’re spreading by—?”

“My pack is hungry,” said the leader.

He inched forward. “I haven’t fed them
today, and I promised them a
special
feast of human flesh,
and now here you are, ripe for the plucking.”

“Come any closer, and I’ll be
plucking
the fur off your head, dog,” growled Tristan. He
brandished his dagger, but Zoey wasn’t sure that was the best thing
to do.

The pack leader’s red eyes flared with
hatred.

“You
dare
call us dog! I’ll be
killing
you
first.” He looked at Tristan, “but not before I
rip that tongue out of your mouth!”

“Kill him boss,” said a red-furred
pimple-faced werewolf. “Rip his heart out. I wanna play fetch with
it.”

“Yeah!” agreed a werewolf with a protruding
forehead. “I want to chew on his intestines—no wait—I want the one
in the space suit!”

Tristan started forward, but Agent Franken
held him back. “Do not be fooled by their size, young man,” he
whispered. “Werewolves are some of the most ferocious mystics, much
worse than a pack of wild dogs. They fight to the death, and they
almost always win. They are a lot stronger than they look—”

“I don’t care,” said Tristan. “We can beat
them.”

Zoey could tell he had lost some of his
confidence. They all needed a breather, but it didn’t look like
that was going to happen.

The pack leader called out. “Looks like cub
meat’s back on the menu, boys!”

Suddenly the werewolves scrambled around and
climbed on top of one another until they looked like furry totem
poles covered with sharp claws.

Simon stifled a laugh. “What do you make of
those?”

But before Zoey could answer, the totem
poles attacked. The bigger werewolves on the bottom supported them,
and they moved surprisingly fast.

“Agent Franken, get behind me,” called
Zoey.

She moved forward and shielded him with her
body. Simon and Tristan formed a protective circle around him and
drew their weapons.

Two werewolf-totem poles launched themselves
ferociously at Tristan. Eight pairs of slashing arms lashed out at
him. They hissed and growled as they cut through his clothes like
they were tissue paper and tore at his skin until it bled.

“Tristan!” screamed Zoey.

But as she staggered towards him, two
werewolf-totem poles boxed her in. They spit and hissed white foam
like rabid dogs.

She saw Simon fire a few rounds at the last
werewolf-totem pole, while Agent Franken whacked it with his
bag.

Zoey cursed and raised her boomerang.

They launched their attack.

She moved on instinct. She spun and threw
her boomerang. It flew ten feet, hit the middle guy of the first
werewolf-totem pole in the chest, and unbalanced them for a second.
For one glorious moment, Zoey thought she had toppled them, but
they held on. The beasts straightened themselves, shrieked,
growled, and hissed, and then charged again.

“I’m going to rip out your heart and eat it
while it’s still beating,” growled the werewolf with the zit face.
His face was almost at Zoey’s level. “I’m going to taste flesh
tonight!”

He shot out a claw, and Zoey hit it away
with the edge of her weapon.

They were too close. She didn’t have enough
space for a good shot, but she had no other choice.

She could feel the hot breath of the other
werewolf-totem pole on the back of her neck. It was right behind
her. She reached back as far as she could, spun around, and whipped
her boomerang at the head of the werewolf on top.

Crunch!

His body went limp, but he didn’t fall. It
was like he was glued to the other guy’s shoulders.

Zoey grabbed her boomerang as it returned.
She had to try again. She wasn’t about to be eaten by the ugliest
furry babies she’d ever seen. Breathing heavily, she crouched and
readied herself—

Searing pain erupted in her back.

Zoey stumbled forward. Her arms were pinned
behind her.

She screamed.

A creature raked her arm with its claws and
scratched her hand.

She dropped her weapon.

Another creature landed on her back and sank
its teeth into her scalp.

She shouted with pain and tried to throw him
off, but she couldn’t.

Little hands and claws grabbed at her. They
slashed her skin and bit her, and she couldn’t do anything to stop
them. It was the most horrifying feeling in the world. She tried
desperately not to the let dread overcome her, but she felt panic
rise like a hot fever.

She blinked the blood from her eyes and saw
the other werewolf-ladder approach. Their red eyes gleamed in
excitement and hunger. The beasts rushed in close to her and
snapped at her face. The fiends were everywhere, shrieking and
biting, tearing her exposed flesh. They were going to eat her
alive. She could hear Simon and Tristan screaming.

Zoey kicked out in desperation, striking as
hard as she could at anything that moved.

It worked. The totem pole wavered, and the
four werewolves tumbled to the ground.

The distraction was all that she needed.

She reached back and head-butted something
behind her, a skull hopefully. Her arms were released immediately,
and she collapsed to the ground. But something that smelled like
dog latched itself onto her back. She reached back, grabbed it, and
threw its furry form to the earth.

She ignored the pain in her back and the
many bleeding and burning gashes around her arms and scrambled to
her feet in search of her boomerang. She found it half buried in
the ground and kicked it free.

“You cannot win,” said a werewolf with scars
all over its face.

“Surrender now, and maybe we’ll give you a
quick death.”

He climbed over his brothers as they
reformed their totem pole. Now two mystic ladders stood in front of
her.

Zoey spit the dirt from her mouth and looked
over to her friends.

Tristan moved so fast that his movements
were a blur. He bellowed like an angry animal, and his daggers spun
through the air so fast they hummed. Although he fought like a
champion, slicing the werewolves two or three at a time, he still
faced one angry werewolf-totem pole. Zoey could see that he was
running only on adrenaline.

Simon wasn’t so lucky. Although he was
limping, and blood seeped from his shirt and jeans, he still fired
his weapon. He stood protectively over a silver bundle on the
ground—Agent Franken. Zoey couldn’t tell if he was alive or
dead.

Her blood boiled, and she let it fuel her
with new vigor.

“I’ll never surrender,” she answered
finally. If she couldn’t defeat the werewolves, then she would have
to come back with reinforcements. But how? What was the weakest
point of a tall, narrow building?

And then it hit her. She knew what to
do.

“Come get me if you can,
dogs
,”
taunted Zoey.

The werewolves sneered.

“Die, agent cub!” they shouted.

“Kill her!”

“Rip her apart! Make her suffer!”

“I want her hair!”

The two werewolf-ladders charged, slashing
and stabbing as they hurtled forward.

Zoey took a breath, raised her right arm,
angled her boomerang, and shot.

The golden weapon soared in the air like a
kite caught in the wind. It soared higher and higher until it was
but a yellow speck in the sky.

The werewolves couldn’t help themselves.
They stopped and started laughing.

“Ooops,” one chuckled. “Did the little agent
cub lose her weapon?”

“Why did you throw it away?” laughed the
pimple-faced one. “You want to die, don’t you? We’ll help you along
with that.”

“Are you too scared to fight?” another
snickered.

Zoey stood stone-faced and waited as calmly
as she could. She counted in her head.

Three . . .

The two ugly totem poles wavered as they
laughed. None of them paid any attention to the spinning golden
boomerang shooting back down towards them at lightning speed.

Two . . . one . . .

SMACK! CLUNK!

The weapon hit the backs of both werewolves’
knees.

The effect was immediate. First the mystics
howled in pain, and then one by one, the totem poles collapsed.

Dust flew in the air as the werewolves
toppled on top of one another, screaming, punching, and trying to
pull themselves out from under the rubble of dirt and fur.

But Zoey didn’t wait. She went straight to
work.

She shot her boomerang again and again into
the pile of werewolf cubs, until every single one of them was out
cold and lay in the dirt.

But she didn’t stop there. She knew her
friends were in trouble.

In pain, and on the verge of collapsing,
Zoey stumbled over to Simon.

The werewolves were attacking him like a
pack of wild dogs. They swarmed him and sank their teeth into his
hands. He yelled in pain and dropped his slingshot.

He drew a small blade from his pocket and
slashed and stabbed at those he could reach. His blue eyes were
wide with terror.

When he saw Zoey he screamed. “Help! Get
them off! Get them off!”

Zoey leaped over Agent Franken’s body,
hoping that he was still alive, and grabbed on to the first
werewolf’s legs. She threw him ten feet into the air, and he
crashed to the ground in a heap.

She kicked and whacked her boomerang on the
remaining creatures. In an instant, Tristan was fighting beside
her, and they hit the werewolves until Simon was free.

“No one told us about werewolves!” cried
Simon exasperatedly. “How come no one ever told us how insane they
were?”

He kicked an unconscious werewolf.

Zoey remembered Agent Franken.

She ran back towards the little man. He lay
on his side. His eyes were closed, but when she kneeled down beside
him, she saw that he was breathing.

“Thank God, you’re alive,” she whispered to
him.

His Hazmat suit was ripped like it had been
in a paper shredder, but somehow the suit had kept him alive. She
looked behind her.

“I don’t know how long the werewolves will
stay down, but the Alphas are looking our way. It won’t take long
before they see us.”

Tristan bent down and easily lifted the
unconscious science officer into his arms.

“Let’s get back to the anchor.”

“So that’s it then?” said Simon, looking
like he’d been to hell and back. “We’ve failed? The world is going
to end? But it
can’t
end. Not now! I’ve never even had a
date yet!”

His voice rose, and Zoey caught sight of a
few Alphas turning their way.

Zoey eyes darted to the big blue hole.

“If only we could get past the Alphas
somehow, then we’d have a chance to shut down the portals.”
And
save my mother,
she wanted to say but didn’t.

She could see a tall man with dark hair and
a pale face fighting among the crowd. His dark eyes were fixed on
Zoey.

“Is that Director Martin over there?” she
asked. She had recognized his hateful scowl instantly. But when she
blinked, he was gone.