Mystics 3-Book Collection (31 page)

Zoey couldn’t tell how long ago the mirrors
had been smashed, but she hoped it was
after
the agency had
sent help.

“The creature knew what it was doing,” she
said, keeping her voice down. “Someone told it to smash all the
mirrors. Someone’s controlling it—”

“Watch out!” cried Tristan.

With a massive swing, the Daragon hurled its
battle axe at them. It spun fast, like a giant, sharp
boomerang.

Zoey leaped out of the way as the axe spun
crashing into the wall behind her. She scrambled to her feet and
ran to the other side of the room with Simon and Tristan.

With three giant leaps, the Daragon crossed
the room and wrenched its axe from deep in the wall. It brushed off
the chunks of plaster and dust that the axe had dislodged and
turned to face them again.

“How long can we keep this up before we get
killed?” said Simon, backing away slowly.

“I don’t know,” answered Zoey. Her hand was
still bleeding profusely. “Let’s just try
not
to get
killed.”

The mystic roared and came at them with a
deathly swing of its battle-axe once again. They leaped out of the
way as the great axe crashed into the ground in front of them and
smashed the marble tiles into dust.

The Daragon snarled through its pointy black
teeth, “Ich gruthic se matvis, homen.”

Its deep rasping voice sounded like the roar
of a lion. It flexed its great chest muscles, and glared at them as
though it was challenging them to a fight.

Zoey looked at Tristan. “You don’t speak
mystic, do you?”

Tristan loaded his slingshot. “Nope.”

“Didn’t think so.”

Tristan scowled at the beast. “But I can
tell you this—it means to kill us.”

“I figured that much.”

The mystic growled, swinging its battle-axe
from side to side, taunting them. Its black eyes moved between them
leisurely, as if it enjoyed deciding whom to kill first.

“I’ve love to stay here and flex my
nonexistent muscles at the dragon-man,” said Simon, his eyes wide,
“but does anyone have a plan?”

“Aim for its head,” said Tristan.

He moved away and circled the creature. “If
we all hit it at the same time, we might at least knock it out—I
think that’s our best shot.”

With trembling fingers, Simon loaded his
weapon with a metal ball. “Guys—you know my aim sucks. I don’t work
well under pressure. And this is
way
too much pressure for
me.”

“Just try to relax, Simon,” said Zoey. She
shifted her weight nervously, trying to calm herself as well.

“I’m ADD—I don’t know the meaning of
relax!
” cried Simon.

Tristan steadied himself. “Okay, you guys—on
three…”

Zoey aimed her boomerang at the beast’s
head.

The Daragon cocked its head to the side,
watching them, and she wondered if it knew what they were planning.
It bared its teeth and looked almost as though it were smiling. It
was enjoying itself.

“One

” counted
Tristan, sweat dripped down his face.

“Thank God it doesn’t breathe fire,” said
Simon hopefully. “I mean, that’s lucky, right, a dragon-man that it
doesn’t
breathe fire.”

“Two…”

Zoey held her breath.

“Three!”

Two metal balls and a boomerang shot through
the air and struck the beast’s head. The creature staggered for a
second, and Zoey felt the thrill of hope as she caught her
boomerang back. But then the Daragon steadied itself and lowered
its eyes. Its top lip quivered into an evil snarl, and with a
deafening roar it tossed its weapon onto the floor and flailed its
arms around in a violent tantrum.

“I think we only made it
really
mad,”
said Simon.

He took a step back. “That’s bad isn’t it?
What do you think it’s going to do now?”

“I don’t know, Simon,” snapped Tristan.

As if in answer to his question, the Daragon
stretched out its arms, flicked its wrists, and two fireballs the
size of watermelons formed in its palms.

Zoey felt the blood drain from her face.
“That’s just great,” she said and looked at Simon.

“I thought you said it
didn’t
breathe
fire!”

Simon shrugged. “I didn’t
breathe
it—it conjured it.”

“What’s the difference?” cried Zoey angrily.
“It’s still
fire!
”

The Daragon sneered wickedly and hurled the
two fireballs.

“MOVE!”

Zoey leaped out of the way, and the
fireballs whizzed past and exploded on the wall behind her. The
entire wall went up in flames, as though it had been sprayed with
gasoline beforehand.

Her eyes watered from the heat of the
flames. She knew she would have burst into flames like the wall if
one of the fireballs had hit her.

“This way!” yelled Tristan.

He jumped over a body and bolted down a
corridor away from the Daragon. Simon and Zoey followed behind
him.

The ground shook beneath their feet as more
fire balls exploded like grenades around them. Chunks of plaster
fell from the ceiling and showered them as they ran. Coughing
through the rubble Zoey stole a look behind her. The Daragon had
stopped hurling fireballs and was charging after them at full
speed, swinging its battle-axe like a madman. They had a few
seconds head start, but the mystic was catching up to them
fast.

They bounded down the corridor, passed some
elevators, and arrived at a T-junction at the end of the
hallway.

“Left or right?” asked Zoey as she tried to
catch her breath.

Suddenly, screams echoed from somewhere down
the left corridor. Then a series of ear-splitting cracks, bangs,
and rattles, like a fireworks display. A woman cried out, then
nothing—silence.

Without another word, the three of them
turned left and charged towards the scream.

They burst into a large oval shaped
auditorium. Heavy red drapes kept the edges of the room in
darkness, and rows of seats in a semi-circle faced down towards a
stage.

“We’re too late,” said Simon as he stared at
a body lying on the ground in a pool of blood. “It’s already
started.”

Zoey could see that the auditorium was
littered with bodies that had been shot in the head, execution
style. Blood splattered the walls, and the marble floors were
sullied in red. There were no moans, no cries for help, just
silence. It was a massacre, a merciless bloodbath. She couldn’t see
anyone alive.

A wave of nausea came over her, and she
forced it down. She had never seen so many dead people before. She
had to be brave.

She found two more bodies sitting in the
chairs at the back row. They didn’t have any blood or visible
injuries on them. They sat with their heads bent slightly
backwards, looking up to the ceiling. Their faces were twisted in
terror, as though they had been frightened to death.

These people hadn’t died at the hands of the
Daragon—or any other mystic—so who had killed them? She already
knew the answer.

“What do Alphas look like? I wouldn’t want
to kill any of our own.”

Zoey squeezed her boomerang hard in her
sudden rage, the pain from her previous fights forgotten.

Tristan shook his head and clenched his jaw.
“Never seen one. All I know is that they look like us. They’re
Sevenths—just
not
with the agency.”

“I’ve never seen one either,” said Simon. He
stepped carefully over the bodies and tried his best not to look at
their faces. But he couldn’t help himself.

“It’s not like the Alphas were
best
friends with the agency. They probably look like any of us—that’s
why no one’s ever really paid closer attention to them—they didn’t
think they’d turn out to be psychos.”

“Right.” Zoey looked around at the victims
to see if she recognized any of them. She feared that Agent Barnes
would be amongst the dead. Then she realized that they had
forgotten something.

Zoey looked at her friends. “Guys—where’s
the Daragon?”

Simon jumped, startled, and Tristan peered
back down the corridor.

“It’s gone,” he said, with a surprised look
on his face. “That’s weird. Why did it stop chasing us?”

A flash of red light zipped past Zoey’s
cheek. Then a red flare scraped her thigh like a red-hot blade and
hit the chair beside her. She cried out in pain and threw herself
to the ground behind a row of chairs. Tristan and Simon flung
themselves onto the ground next to her. At first she thought they
had been attacked by mystics, but when she raised her head slightly
between the seats, she realized how wrong she was.

A dozen men and women clad in exquisitely
tailored, blood-red suits stood on the auditorium stage. The men
had army-style crew cuts, and all the women had their hair pulled
back into tight buns or ponytails. They all looked mildly amused—as
if this was a game to them, and they were already winning. All
except one of them carried large automatic weapons at their
sides.

The woman without a gun had dark hair and
milky white skin. She held her right hand out in front of her, and
above her palm a glowing red sphere hovered like an apple suspended
by invisible strings. The woman’s cold smile sent a chill rolling
down Zoey’s back.

Then a man whom Zoey had thought was dead
stood up in the middle of the auditorium. He started limping
through the aisle towards one of the side exits. Zoey felt the
strain and desperation that she saw on the man’s face.

The woman with the sphere stepped down from
the platform calmly and moved toward the man. The man whimpered
when he saw her, and in a last desperate attempt to save his life
he moved as fast as he could. But it wasn’t fast enough, and the
woman blocked his way

“NO!” cried the man. “No, please, don’t!
Please!”

The woman smiled and lifted the sphere
towards his face. A sudden beam of red light shot out from the
globe and hit the man’s eyes. His expression twisted grotesquely
from fear to a terror like nothing Zoey had ever seen before. Then
he froze like a statue.

The woman laughed and pushed the man softly,
with a single finger. He toppled to the ground, like a dead tree,
and didn’t move again.

“That was pretty disturbing,” whispered
Simon, who looked like he might throw up. “He died of fright. We
better get out of here before the mad lady decides to use her
freaky snow globe on us.”

“I’m guessing
these
are the Alphas,
right?” said Zoey.

She looked away long enough to check the
wound in her thigh. Blood soaked through her jeans, but it wasn’t a
deep cut.

“Looks like it,” answered Tristan. “Now that
they’ve seen us, they’re coming this way—and I have a feeling they
don’t want to chat.”

Simon frowned. “Well, they dressed for the
occasion. I guess they were going for a theme—red for
blood
.”

“And red for murder.”

The Alphas marched confidently across the
atrium in a perfect horizontal line. They looked down at their
victims in disgust—like they deserved to be dead. Zoey’s hatred for
them grew— these weren’t Sevenths—they were nothing like the
Sevenths in the agency. These soldier-type assassins appeared to
kill for fun and to take pleasure in the suffering of others.
They
were the
real
monsters.

“We need to get out of here and find Agent
Barnes,” she said quickly.

“There’s no way we can fight them all—and
there’s a Daragon on our trail back in the corridors
somewhere.”

Tristan looked at her. “This place is huge.
It’ll take forever to search it. Do we even know where we’re
going?”

“No, but we don’t have a choice, do we?”
said Zoey.

The Alphas had already walked halfway across
the auditorium and were closing in on their hiding place.

“They’re coming, and they’re going to kill
us when they get here. We should double back. I saw some stairs
near the entrance to the auditorium—so there’s another level—maybe
Agent Barnes is there. We have to check it out.”

“Anywhere is better than here,” said Simon
peering through a gap in the chairs. “If we want to make a move, we
better go now.”

With a last look at the marching Alphas,
they jumped up and sprinted back towards the exit. Bullets whizzed
passed them and peppered the walls above them. They ducked and kept
running. The corridor narrowed, and they made for the stairs.

They had almost made it when the Daragon
smashed through the wall in front of them.

They leaped out of the way as the beast
hurled its giant battle-axe. With a
whoosh
like a scythe
through a field of wheat, the blade spun over Zoey’s head. She fell
to the ground amid a shower of splinters and plaster rubble. She
scrambled up to her feet with a mouth full of dust and a searing
pain in her shoulder.

“Zoey? Why are you over there?” cried Simon,
as he backed away slowly from the giant beast.

“Me?” Zoey coughed through the dust. “Why
are you guys over there? I just jumped.”

Tristan and Simon were on one side of the
Daragon, and she was on the other. She blinked through the dust and
saw the stairs up ahead.

The Daragon wailed, turning its head from
side to side to keep them all in sight. Its tail lashed out eagerly
behind it, and yellow drool dripped from the corners of its mouth.
It swiveled its axe playfully, taunting them. It seemed to want to
slice them up rather than burn them this time. It was enjoying
their distress.

Zoey couldn’t think of anything clever to do
without sacrificing herself. How could she help Agent Barnes and
the agency if she were dead?

Tristan seemed to read her thoughts.

“Go! Go look for Agent Barnes while we
distract the Daragon,” he said.

“What? No!” cried Zoey. “I’m not leaving you
guys. Forget it.”

“Yes, you are,” pressed Tristan.