Mystics 3-Book Collection (90 page)

Zoey breathed in all her anger and let it
fill her with energy. If she was going to die, then she’d go down
fighting. If Mrs. Dupont wanted to see a
show
, then a show
Zoey was going to
give
her.

The army of skeletons moved to the right
side of the stadium and waited like they were the reinforcements,
should things go in Zoey’s favor.

The wolves reached them first. The two great
beasts snarled and shrieked, and their red eyes gleamed with hatred
and hunger.

“If anyone here believes in some God, it’s
time to pray,” said Simon behind her.

Elizabeth planted herself. “Let them
come.”

She brandished her sword, looking braver and
stronger than Zoey had first anticipated, and it filled her with
more confidence.

The wolves were so close that Zoey could
smell their putrid fur. She raised her sword.

“Here! Come over here!” Tristan leaped
forward and away from the group. His skin shone blue as he waved
his daggers like baseball bats.

“Tristan, what are you doing?” shouted Zoey.
But she knew he was taking on the biggest beasts so that the rest
of them wouldn’t have to. She loved him for it.

The wolves howled angrily and went straight
for Tristan.

A rust-colored wolf leaped towards his neck.
But Tristan was ready.

The wolf dove for him, but he moved, got
behind it, and wrapped an arm around its neck. He held it
struggling against him while he struck with his blade, but the
other wolf leaped onto his back. Tristan cried out in pain but
didn’t let go. He twisted his body and managed to kick the second
beast off. With spit flying from its maw, it spun and reared. Three
spikes rose on its back and shot straight at him. He swung his left
arm and blocked two, but the third pierced his shoulder. His knees
buckled. Miraculously, he remained standing.

Zoey moved towards him.

“NO! STAY BACK!” howled Tristan, and Zoey
froze mid-step.

Still hanging on to the first wolf, Tristan
whirled around.

The black wolf lunged again.

Tristan swung his blade in
an upward arc, and the creature spun through the air and hit the
ground with a nasty thud. Its severed head fell away from its body
and landed in a puddle of blackened blood.

He let go of the red wolf, and it crumbled
to the ground.

Zoey thought she could hear the crowd
booing, but she didn’t have time to dwell on that.

“SCORE!” shouted Simon defiantly to the
crowd.

“Two to zero for us! Better reorganize those
bets. We’re winning this!”

For a second she thought Simon was about to
do a
happy dance
, but he taunted the crowd with his sword
instead.

Tristan staggered and pulled out the black
spike still lodged in his shoulder. Blood seeped out from the deep
wound, but he didn’t even flinch.

He hurried back to the group, and just as
Zoey started to ask him if he was okay, the crowd cheered
loudly.

She felt a sudden gust of wind and looked
up.

Winged creatures with fangs for teeth and
stingers in their scorpion tails hovered above them. Their deeply
sunken yellow eyes and heavy brows made them look as if they were
grimacing with
a cunning intelligence.

“Watch out for their
poison tails!” cried Zoey.

She stood shoulder to
shoulder with her mother and Simon.

The creatures shrieked and dove.

Zoey realized that they were going for Simon
and her mother because they looked old and weak. As one of the
creature’s talons neared her mother’s throat, Zoey swung her sword
and cut the beast’s hands. The creature shrieked, and with a great
beat of its wings it flew back out of reach.

Tristan knew that Simon and Elizabeth were
the targets, too, and he rushed to Simon’s side. He struck one of
the creatures with great whacks, while Simon kept his own and
stabbed the third creature as it tried to get in closer.

“Take that, stinker!” said Simon as he poked
it again, feeling more confident with every blow. “Don’t suppose
you’ve ever heard of soap? You smell like cat pee.”

The creature sneered and lashed out its
tail. Simon’s feet were torn from under him. He went sprawling and
lost his sword.

The creature’s eyes widened in delight.

“You’re mine now, human!” It flapped its
wings and lashed its stinger towards Simon’s chest like a venomous
snake.

Zoey sprung into the air and kicked the
stinger out of the way, just as it nicked Simon’s jacket.

“Simon get back!” she cried and pulled him
to his feet behind her. He picked up his sword and backed away.

Tristan fought the other winged beast with
great strokes of his sword, and the creature shrieked angrily as it
couldn’t get near him.

Zoey heard a great flap of wings and felt
searing pain in her shoulders as she was thrown into the air. She
hit the ground hard and had the wind knocked of her. She wiped the
blood from her mouth and nose as she struggled to regain her
breath. Her eyes watered from the burning vinegar stench of the
beast that still lingered around her. By a miracle she still held
on to her sword. She struggled to her feet and turned again to face
the hovering beast.

“We are going to kill you,
agent!
”
hissed the bat-like female creature with a high-pitched voice that
sounded like screeching tires.

“You cannot win.
No one
wins. Why
don’t you give up? I will give you a quick death.” It sneered.

“I promise,” it said in mock sincerity.

“Who said anything about giving up?” spat
Zoey. She turned her blade in her hand. “I’m not afraid of you.
Maybe
you’re
afraid of me?”

The creature grinned. Its tail slashed
eagerly behind it and then its vein-ridden face darkened. “You
humans are so stupid, you don’t even know when you’re beaten.”

“We’re not beaten, not yet,” said Zoey
through gritted teeth as she tried to anticipate the creature’s
next move.

Tristan had the other creature pinned to the
ground. He was winning.

“Well, that suits me fine,” laughed the
creature. “I’m
starving
. Human blood is the sweetest.”

The creature shrieked again and dived tail
first towards Zoey.

Zoey ducked, spun around, and blocked the
stinger with the edge of her blade. She cried out as the force of
the hit sent stinging pain up her arm, but she kept moving. If she
stopped now she was dead. She turned around, panting, trying to
catch her breath.

The creature’s grin was gone. It came at her
again with greater determination, swinging its tail like a whip.
Zoey dived and rolled, and the stinger missing her completely. She
kicked out at the creature’s chest, but before she knew it, its
giant claws had ripped into her back. She was thrown into the air
again, and lights exploded behind her eyes when she hit the
ground.

She rolled over, ready this time, as the
beast wrapped its hands around her neck and squeezed. She raised
her sword and plunged it into the back of the creature’s skull.

The effect was instantaneous. The beast fell
dead on top of her.

Zoey gagged at the stench, heaved the
creature off her, and staggered to her feet.

She heard a gag from behind. The creature
whose hands she had severed had its feet wrapped around her
mother’s throat.

Zoey gave a roar and charged. The creature’s
thin, deadly stinger flashed out. Instinctively, she went down and
rolled. The beast’s tail slashed above her head and missed her by
inches. Not knowing what possessed her, she stomped on the tail and
pinned it down. Then she brought her sword down with all her
strength and severed the stinger.

The creature wailed and sent Elizabeth
sprawling unconscious to the dirt. It thrashed in the air, waving
its bloody stumps where its hand used to be and swinging its
stinger-less tail ineffectually.

But still it stretched its black lips into
an evil smile.

“You might have taken my hands and stinger,
but I’m still going to kill you,” it threatened. “You can’t escape.
You’re all going to die.”

It moved its talons towards Zoey’s neck with
lightning speed. It clawed its way through Zoey’s shield and sent
her scuttling back as it howled and hissed angrily.

The beast soared at Zoey again, but she
waited until the last minute and then jumped up and slashed with
her sword. The creature gasped and faltered.

Zoey grabbed it, flipped it on its back, and
stepped on its neck. The beast squirmed like a fish, but Zoey
pushed down harder. Without hesitating, she thrust the tip of her
blade into the creature’s skull. Its head drooped to the side.

When Zoey looked up, the last of the bat
creatures lay dead at Tristan’s feet. And to her immense relief,
her mother stood next to Simon. She still looked frail and in need
of a doctor, but she smiled at her.

“SPIDERS!” roared Simon suddenly, pointing
behind her.

“Zoey, watch out!” Tristan leaped towards
her, but it was too late.

A giant spider with eight glowing red eyes
and mandibles the size of machetes leaped at her and pinned her
down. Her sword fell from her hand.

It reared its hairy head, and shot its
mandibles forward. But Zoey turned her head to the side just in
time, and the creature’s mandibles brushed against her ear. She was
aware of Tristan’s voice, but she couldn’t hear what he was
saying.

The spider bit down at her again, and she
caught the mandibles with her bare hands. It was like trying to
keep giant scissors from cutting off her neck. She was yanked and
pulled as the spider tried to break free from her hold. Zoey knew
the thing would chomp off her head if she let go, and she really
needed
her head.

Just as her hands slipped and the spider’s
mandibles reached her neck, the spider’s head fell onto Zoey’s
chest. A hot yellow liquid flowed over her, and Tristan appeared
above her. With a great heave, he rolled the spider’s dead body off
her and pulled her to her feet.

“You owe me for that,” he said as he pulled
his dagger from the beast’s body. He was covered in yellow slime,
too.

“I’m thinking when we get out of here we can
go to dinner and a movie or something?”

Zoey grabbed her sword and smiled in spite
of herself.

Another spider leaped at her. She ducked and
impaled it with her sword. It collapsed to the ground on its
back.

“You mean like a
real
date?”

Tristan slashed the legs off the fallen
spider. “Yeah, a real date.”

Zoey felt invincible, like she could do
anything.

Elizabeth screamed. “Zoey, get back! Get
back!”

Zoey
hated
normal-sized spiders, and
she hated these giant ones even more. It was time to get rid of the
spiders once and for all. She planted her feet and readied
herself.

The spider screeched and leaped.

Zoey jerked away sideways and stabbed her
weapon into one of its eight eyes, pushing it until she heard a
satisfying crunch. The spider went limp and then it crumbled at her
feet.

Zoey wiped the yellow, sticky ooze from her
face and looked around. All the spiders were dead.

She looked to the platform, and to her
surprise Gigor took a great gulp from his goblet and smiled at her.
But Mrs. Dupont was not smiling.

Tristan moved beside her. His shirt was red
with blood from the wound on his shoulder.

He caught her looking and said, “It’s
nothing. Don’t worry about it.”

“It’s a lot of blood, Tristan.” Although
Zoey didn’t know how much blood a normal person could lose without
suffering the effects, she knew the amount on his shirt was
bad.

Tristan shrugged. “It’s nothing, really,
just a scratch.”

“It doesn’t look like nothing,” insisted
Zoey.

“We did it,” said Simon happily and
high-fived Elizabeth. “We actually did it! We’re going home! We’re
going home!”

Simon’s good cheer and the smiles on
everyone’s faces caused Zoey to relax for a moment. She could
almost smell the fresh baked bread in Aria’s kitchen.

But just when they thought that their
victory was near, the army of skeletons marched towards them.

Chapter 22

S
imon looked like
he was about to collapse.

“I totally forgot the
bones brigade
.
They look pretty intense. You think we can beat those guys?”

“What other choice do we have?” Tristan’s
face darkened.

The armor-clad skeletons
reminded Zoey of Charlie, the skeleton mascot from her biology
class in high school, but Charlie didn’t
move,
and he wasn’t on his way to
attack them. They marched in a straight line, with gleaming swords,
battle-axes, and spears in their white-boned hands.

The stadium was still. The
only sounds were the clicking and clacking of bones rubbing against
metal. They had no eyes, and Zoey couldn’t tell where or at whom
they were looking. They had no flesh. If they didn’t bleed, maybe
they
couldn’t
be
killed.

Zoey glanced up at the podium. Mrs. Dupont’s
smile had returned.

“They have to have a weak spot,” said Zoey.
“Everyone has a weak spot, right? Then so do they.”

“Yeah, but they’re
skeletons
!” said Simon.
“How do we kill something that’s already
dead
?”

“I don’t know, but we have to try.”

With a swish, the skeleton army raised their
weapons.

“Zoey’s right,” said Tristan. “We need a
plan. The army is a scare tactic. I’m sure everyone who’s ever
stood in this arena were scared out of their minds when they first
saw them.”