Mystics 3-Book Collection (3 page)

The local library loomed over the other
buildings like a concrete mountain. A large sign carved into the
stone read:
Toronto
Public Library, Gladstone/Bloor
Branch.
Soft yellow light poured out from the rows of windows,
and Zoey could see shadows of people moving inside.

Doing her best to avoid landing in puddles,
she crossed the street in a dash. It was deserted except for an
elderly woman with a yellow umbrella. A taxi rushed past her and
soaked her with water.

“Hey!” Zoey screamed, outraged. It would
take forever to get dry now. Water seeped into her shoes as she
rushed by the old lady.

She heard a grunt, and it didn’t sound
human.

Zoey skidded to a stop and whirled around.
The old woman shuffled forward in the rain. Where had the noise
come from? Thinking it was probably the old woman clearing her
throat, she turned and started again towards the library. As she
quickened her pace, she felt goose bumps again—her creeps.

A screech echoed behind her. Then she heard
a flap of wings, and a spine-chilling moan.

With her heart in her throat, she stopped
and turned.

Something landed behind the elderly woman.
It was the size of a horse and looked like a gargoyle from a
medieval castle. It had a human shape with scaly black oily skin
and long clawed fingers and toes. Large membranous wings stretched
out behind it and cast a dark shadow over the woman. Spikes
protruded from its back, and a long barbed tail lashed
threateningly. It had horns like a bull’s, and a large mouth full
of needle-like teeth. But it was the face that was most
unsettling—the creature had no eyes.

Zoey’s pulsed raced.

The old woman couldn’t see it. She stopped
walking and stood staring ahead with a confused expression on her
face. Her umbrella fell from her hand. The demon spread its wings
and opened its mouth. A brilliant white mist flowed out from the
woman like a transparent veil and was sucked directly into the
creature’s maw. The woman’s skin turned gray, and she started to
tremble uncontrollably. The creature was sucking the life force out
of her.

A mixture of fear and hatred surged through
Zoey as she stared at the eight-foot-tall monster. The old lady’s
eyes rolled back into her head. She was going to die.

“Stop!” Zoey’s voice reverberated in the
street louder than she had expected and sounded more confident than
she felt. Her mouth was dry with fear.

“Let go of her! You’re killing her!”

It worked. The demon let the old woman
go.

She slumped to the ground on her knees, her
life holding on by a thread.

The creature turned its lifeless face
towards Zoey.

Its tail lashed out behind it, and Zoey felt
its hunger, like a dog drooling over a treat. It lifted its head in
the air as though it was searching for a scent. It glanced down at
the old woman one more time, and then crept towards Zoey, as though
it were choosing the better prey.

Zoey gagged on its pungent stench. The air
had turned foul, like sewer gas.

Adrenaline pumped through her veins. She
planted her feet firmly, reached inside her backpack, and threw a
handful of salt at the advancing creature.

The white crystals showered the beast like a
heavy fall of snow. It stopped, surprised, shook itself, and then
kept coming.

A little cry escaped Zoey’s lips. The salt
had no effect.

With a beat of its wings, the demon soared
through the air and came directly at her.

Zoey grabbed her backpack and ran. The
drumming of her heart in her ears droned any other sounds. It felt
almost like a dream, it had to be a dream. The winged demon was
going to tear her to shreds.

She could hear the flap of the demon’s great
wings like the wind in the sails of a great ship. She could feel
its warm breath on the back of her neck. Why hadn’t the salt
worked? It had
always
worked before! Any second now the
demon would rip off her head with a swing of its massive talons,
and she would be a headless running chicken.

But she wasn’t ready to die. Not today.

Running full speed, fueled by desperation
and fear, she tore down the street, pushing her legs with every
ounce of adrenaline she could muster. The library building
disappeared behind her. She ran until every step made her wince,
and her legs screamed at her to stop. She became a running
machine.

An ear-splitting shriek cracked the air—it
was laughing at her. The air from its wing beats pushed aside the
rain, and its rasping breath grew louder. She felt a tug on her
backpack and pulled a sharp turn to the right. The creature’s hold
on her released.

She bolted a few paces straight, and then
she took a sharp left. Blinking to see through the rain, she
sprinted down the street eluding the demon’s grasp with each zig
and zag. Although the demon had no eyes, it was still on her like a
giant angry wasp—Dracula’s dino-bat was using echolocation to
detect her!

Her legs burned as she ran. Every breath was
like swallowing buckets of acid into her lungs. Her throat was raw.
She couldn’t keep on like this. She would have to face the demon
and fight eventually, but with what? Not knowing how clever the
demon was, she couldn’t risk thinking it was stupid. She needed to
figure out a plan to stay alive.

Another piercing screech echoed in the
street behind her. Cars raced passed her, honking angrily, missing
her by a millimeter. She turned right onto a narrow lane to get out
of the traffic and sprinted down the next block.

She could see a large gray stone building up
ahead. Its boarded up windows were decorated with primitive
graffiti. The words,
Cinema
Déjà View
were etched in
black above the double red doors. A crooked
We’re Closed
sign was nailed to them. She made a beeline for the front
doors.

She felt a gust of wind on the back of her
head and heard the giant flap of wings very close behind her. And
at the last minute, she faked to the left and tore towards the
right side of the building. A crash thundered behind her, then an
angry wail.

Without stopping, Zoey ran down the side of
the theatre, through a small courtyard, and slipped inside a side
emergency door. In complete darkness she ran blindly down a hallway
that branched out into more corridors. Her foot caught on
something, and she tumbled down a flight of steps. She pushed
herself up, but excruciating pain like liquid fire burned on the
inside of her right ankle bone. She cursed her own stupidity.

As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she
saw that she stood in the main seating area of the theatre. The
only source of light came from the antique fixtures that lined the
walls and cast an eerie gloom around the rows of seats. Her skin
tingled—the demon was near. She resisted the urge to cry out
because of the pain in her ankle, clenched her jaw, and bounded
down the remaining steps. She grabbed at the seats to keep the
weight off her ankle and moved towards the stage—

The theatre shook as though a bomb had
detonated at the front entrance. Glass shattered and fragments of
the front doors exploded through the main lobby and landed in the
aisles. Debris rained down from the ceiling. Zoey coughed blindly
in the dust and mold, but she finally reached the bottom of the
stairs and hauled herself up the platform. Bent double from the
cramp in her side and the pain of her ankle, she took a moment to
catch her breath.

The demon soared from the lobby with another
terrible screech. Its bat-like wings flapped in cadence, sending
dust all around as it landed gracefully on the opposite side of the
stage. It bared its gnarled teeth in an ugly smile

Zoey watched transfixed. The creature was
more hideous up close, although it looked almost human when it
folded its wings. It smelled of decay.

It cocked its head to the side and spoke in
a rasping voice, “You cannot hide from me,
Agent.
Your stink
is the smell of arrogance and deception. It follows you wherever
you go. You reek of it.”

“Here we go again with the agent thing,”
said Zoey, her throat was raw and dry, but she was glad her voice
was even. “And by the way,
I’m
not the one who smells.”

The creature watched her with its eyeless
face.

“
This
world does not belong to you.
You are fools in feeble bodies. You are easily killed. My mission
is to kill as many agents as I can, and I am going to continue with
you.”

“Well, I’m not so
easily
killed,”
said Zoey. “I’m a lot stronger than I look.”

The demon shook its sightless head.

“Your lot always makes it so difficult for
the rest of us. This world will be better without you agents—you
pollute
it.”

Zoey adjusted her weight on her left leg and
felt the pain lessen on her right ankle. She might be able to make
a run for it after all—but she needed a diversion for a head
start—otherwise she was demon-kibble.

The demon’s tail slashed eagerly behind
it.

“I will enjoy killing you. I will drink your
blood simply for pleasure. I enjoy a hot drink. But we demons do
not simply feast on the mere blood of humans—your essence is what
we crave. Your life force empowers us and perpetuates our stay in
this world. The more we feed—the more powerful we become—and we
will soon kill every last agent and make this world our own.”

“I doubt it.” Zoey frowned.

“I’ve never seen a monster like you before.
What are you anyway? Some sort of dragon experiment gone
wrong?”

She needed to keep the creature talking to
give her time to plan her escape. She couldn’t fight it—the only
thing she could do was limp
really
fast. But where? Light
seeped in from behind the lobby. It was one way out. Could she make
it that far before the demon tore her to shreds like grated
cheese?

“I am a Duyen demon,” answered the creature.
“I have existed long before the time of men, when your world was
merely wasteland.”

The demon moved its head from side to side
like a snake. “You are different from the other agents, you
seem…unprepared.”

Zoey faked a laugh. “Well, it’s been a crazy
day you know—papers to file—bad guys to catch.” She stole a look
behind the creature, searching for a weapon or anything she could
use to fight with, but she couldn’t see anything useful.

“Has your team abandoned you?” asked the
demon. “Where are the rest of your despicable agent friends?”

A wicked smile spread across the blind
creature’s face. “Unless you are here all on your own. I can smell
your fear. I can almost
taste
it—you
are
on your own,
aren’t you?”

Zoey pressed her mouth shut. The situation
was getting worse by the second.

“Now why would they leave such an innocent
little girl on her own?” said the demon leaning forward. “How very
curious…”

“Maybe I’m suicidal,” said Zoey. She took a
step back.

The creature laughed. “No matter, I’m going
to kill you now, little girl. Agent or not, it’s your time to die!”
The demon spread its wings and leaped forward—

A blinding blast of orange light shot
through the air like a firework and hit the creature in the chest.
The demon shot backwards as if it had been hit by cannon fire. It
wailed as it fell to the ground in a ball of fire, flailing its
limbs in a desperate attempt to extinguish the flames.

A teenage boy and two men raced towards the
flaming creature. They hauled themselves easily up onto the
platform. The teen had a V-shaped weapon in his hand that looked
like a modernized slingshot. The two men held red weapons that
looked like jumbo-sized water cannons with glass barrels on the
top. Orange liquid fire glowed from inside the glass. They ignored
her completely and trained their weapons on the demon as they
approached it carefully.

“You’re in violation of the Mystic Treaty,”
said one of the men, with a business-like expression on his face.
He looked like a young bank manager on casual Friday, not overly
handsome, with trimmed brown hair, polished black boots, jeans, and
a smart-looking black leather jacket.

“Article number 6-A,” he continued,
“
trespassing through another dimension without authorization
from the agency, and the killing of humans is punishable by
death
. You are well aware of the laws, Duyen.”

Black steam rose from the demon’s scorched
body, smothering the theatre with a rotten flesh stench.

“Your laws, not mine!” it growled. “I care
nothing for your treaty,
Agent
. Contracts conceived by
humans mean nothing to us. I will rip the flesh off your
bones!”

With a flap of its singed wings the demon
shot up in the air and came down at the man with destructive
force.

“Now why did it have to say that?” said the
same man with a smug expression. “Agent Lee, some assistance.”

Just as the creature was about to rip out
the man’s throat with its talons, both men raised their weapons and
fired at the same time. Two balls of liquid fire engulfed the
winged demon. It hit the wall and slumped to the ground, howling in
pain and anger. Within seconds the fire consumed it like a piece of
paper. The demon disappeared and ashes fell to the ground like
blackened snow. The Duyen demon was no more.

Zoey was mesmerized. The man called Agent
Lee slipped his gun back into a fold in his long black trench coat.
With his shades, he looked ready to walk the runway for the new
clothing line of FBI outfits. He was younger than the other man and
appeared to be Asian. Although he was a few inches shorter than the
other man, Zoey saw that he compensated with an over-the-top spiked
black hairdo.