Mystics 3-Book Collection (67 page)

When she was out of breath, the giant
finally turned its head around. It looked at Zoey like she was an
irritating mosquito.

“Put my friend down,” said Zoey boldly.

She inched forward and faced the creature.
“Let him go! This is your
last
warning.”

She squared her shoulders and raised herself
on her toes, trying to make herself taller.

The mystic’s laugh sounded like the rumble
of an earthquake.

“He die. You die. Agents
all
die!
”

“Nobody’s dying, giant,” she hissed. “At
least not
us
! I can’t say the same about you or your buddy
over there.”

The mystic looked at the motionless giant on
the ground behind Zoey. It looked back at her, frowned severely,
and growled deep inside its throat like a lion about to tear apart
its prey. Its cold pink eyes sent a chill down Zoey’s back. If she
didn’t come up with a plan soon, the giant was going to rip her
apart like a well-done turkey.

With great effort, Simon raised one of his
arms and pointed to his own head. “Hit. Head,” he croaked.

And then Zoey understood.

The giant lunged at her with its free
hand.

Zoey ducked, jumped to the side, and came up
over the other side of the great creature. She tried to jump and
hit it in the head, but she could only reach its upper back. She
held her weapon with her right hand and leaped in the air as if she
was going for a basketball slam dunk, but the mystic was too
tall.

“ZOEY! WATCH OUT!”

A massive fist came hurtling towards her
head.

She jumped backwards, tripped, and fell, but
miraculously still held onto the bat. She rolled on the ground and
then scrambled to her feet. If she stopped moving, the giant would
crush her. The mystic wailed furiously, thrashing Simon’s body
around like a ragdoll as it went for her again.

Zoey winced at the pain on her friend’s
face. His eyes were slowly closing. His skin had gone from red to a
scary purple-blue. He couldn’t breathe. She
had
to do
something or she would lose him.

And then it hit her.

Just as the great brute charged at her
again, she balanced the bat in her right hand like a harpoon,
aimed, and fired.

Maybe it was the practice she’d had using
the boomerang for months, or maybe it was luck, but the bat soared
in the air like a fat arrow and hit the giant smack in the forehead
with an echoing
thump
.

The giant looked surprised that she had
actually hit it. It wavered like a great tree in the wind as the
same mysterious silver bubbles popped around its head. Whatever was
affecting the creature, Zoey could tell it was fighting it. The
giant’s body shook, and sweat trickled down its horrid face. It
took in rapid breaths in an attempt to overcome whatever was
attacking it. It seemed stronger than the other giant, and for a
horrible moment, Zoey thought they were doomed and that the bat
hadn’t worked. But then Simon slipped from the beast’s grip, and
the great beast froze mid-step, toppled over, and landed on the
ground in a cloud of dust.

“Simon!” Zoey cried out in relief. Simon
staggered to his feet on his own, his head still attached to his
body.

He smiled weakly as he rubbed his sore neck.
“I’m still breathing.”

Zoey grabbed Simon in a bear hug. “I’m so
glad you’re okay,” she squeezed him tightly and then let him
go.

“You had me worried for a minute there. I
thought you were a goner. Your face had turned blue. I don’t know
what I would have done if the giant had killed you.”

Simon’s face reddened, and he pulled away
from Zoey awkwardly.

“I’m not that easily killed,” he said as he
wiped the giant’s disgusting yellow spit from his face. “Yuck!
Besides, we’re almost like
real
agents. We know how to
defend ourselves, don’t we? I think we did a pretty awesome job,
all things considered.”

“Right,” laughed Zoey. Simon always had a
way of putting a smile on her face. “Of course we did.”

“Why are you laughing?” said Simon. “I
almost had him you know . . . he just . . . he just
surprised
me. And I dropped my bat, that’s all. I could’ve
taken him, easily. I’ve been working out—check these out.”

He rolled up his sleeve and flexed his
raisin-sized bicep muscle. “I’ve got killer arms. Girls dig
that.”

Zoey covered her eyes and laughed
harder.

“Go ahead, laugh, but you know I’m cut like
Bruce Lee.”

Simon kicked the giant. “That’s for choking
me, stinker. Told you that you were going to get it. And now it’s
nap time, big guy.”

Zoey inspected the giant a little closer and
made a face. “They smell like they’ve been rolling around in
garbage and then washed in sewer water. No, I take that back. I
don’t think they’ve ever bathed. EVER.”

“I don’t think bathing is a requirement with
giants,” informed Simon as he fought unsuccessfully with the yellow
snot that stuck to his jacket.

“In fact, I think the more they smell the
better in a giant’s world. Maybe that’s how they attract the
females . . . the
more
they stink, the more they
get
.”

“Eww, that’s nasty.” When Zoey laughed, she
cried out and held her rib cage gently.

Simon frowned. “What’s wrong?”

“I think I’ve might have broken a few
ribs—”

Suddenly, Zoey felt the ground shake beneath
her sneakers. Thunder boomed in the bay, and she heard shouts and
cries. Her first thought was
another giant
.

Zoey and Simon shared a worried look and
then turned towards the sudden commotion. Down by the beach people
had gathered and were pointing at something. Zoey rushed over to
the edge of the small rise to get a better look.

An oval-shaped, blue shimmering light
hovered above the tan-colored beach and wavered like an upside-down
pool of water.

Zoey’s heart thumped against her broken
ribs. “Simon, are my eyes playing tricks on me or is
that
another portal?”

“Yup, that’s a portal all right.”

“And am I going mad or can the Mutes
see
it?”

Simon stood by her side. “Uh . . . I think
they can. Yes, they most definitely can. This is bad, Zoey. This is
really,
really
bad.”

Zoey’s chest tightened. Any second now a
mystic would cross over, and there was no telling
which
mystic or how
many
of them. It could be more giants, but it
could also be something a lot more evil and sinister.

Two guys and a girl circled the portal as
they inspected it. They seemed to think this was some kind of joke,
like the portal was the result of some sort of visual effects
stunt. They laughed and shoved one another playfully, inching
closer and closer to the wavering light of the portal.

“But how can that be?” asked Zoey, feeling
more and more nervous as the Mutes ventured closer to the portal.
“Unless I missed something on the memo, I thought only Sevenths
could see portals. How is this even possible? It doesn’t make any
sense.”

“Beats me,” answered Simon as he pulled a
strand of yellow mucous from his hair. “It’s the first time I’ve
heard of this. I mean, everything is a little out of whack since
feline-face did the Great Jointing—”

“Great Junction.”

“Yeah, that thing,” said Simon. He inspected
a strange brown clump on his jacket that might have been pudding
but definitely
wasn’t
.

“I think you’re right.” Zoey shifted
uneasily.

The portal had attracted nearly twenty
people now. The curious teenagers moved closer and closer to it.
Her heart beat faster and faster. She felt like she was going to
jump out of her skin.

“When the second giant appeared—that
portal—it
closed
right away,” noted Zoey. “How long do you
think this portal is going to stay open?”

Simon shook his head. “No idea. Each portal
is unique. Think of them as different doors. Some are small while
some are huge. Some stay open longer than others.”

“Is there a way to close them?”

Simon shrugged. “I don’t know. When you
think about it, the portals are
forced
open, right? Then it
only makes sense we should be able to
close
them.”

He glanced over his shoulder. “We should get
back soon. I don’t know how long the giants are going to stay
down.”

“But what about the portal and all those
people?” asked Zoey, “We can’t just leave them!”

“We can’t do anything about it now. The best
thing we
can
do is get back to the agency as soon as
possible and let them know. I’m sure
they’ll
know what to
do.”

Zoey knew he was right. Both giants were
unconscious, but she knew that hauling them back was going to prove
difficult. There was nothing they could do about the portal now
besides telling the agency about it as soon as possible. She hoped
they could close it somehow. But what about all the people who
could see it? How were the agents going to explain or fix that? She
would have to worry about it later.

“I have a bad feeling about this,” said Zoey
as she turned around and started to make her way back to the
comatose giants. “Let’s go—”

“Uh-oh.”

Zoey halted and then rushed back beside
Simon. Her heart sank.

The group of teenagers was dangerously close
to the portal, so close that if one of them decided to reach out
now they would
touch
it.

“No,” said Zoey, exasperated. “Oh God,
no.”

“Don’t do it, man,” said Simon. His face had
gone from red to white in a flash. “
Don’t
do it.”

The curious teens laughed and shoved one
another, all trying to get to the front as though they stood in
front of a large mirror. And then before anyone could stop him, one
of the teens reached out and touched the portal with his fingers.
The tips of his fingers grazed the surface of the portal, and he
withdrew them quickly. Even from a distance Zoey could see his hand
was unscathed. The teen gave his friends a cocky smile and stepped
closer—

“NO!” shouted Zoey at the top of her lungs.
But she was too far away, and her voice was drowned by the sound of
the waves.

It was like watching a horror movie when one
of the actors went into the room where the murderer waited, hidden
behind the door. Even if you shouted
no, don’t go in
, at the
screen, they always went it.

Zoey tore down the hill, forgetting the
giants and Simon, and raced towards the portal on the beach.

“No! Get back! Don’t go near it!” she
bellowed between gasps of air. “Stop! Get back!”

The teens halted and looked back at her, and
for a moment, she felt relief. But then they laughed and turned
back towards the portal. Maybe they thought she was part of the
performance?

“This isn’t some practical joke!” Zoey’s
thighs burned as she tried to run faster in the loose sand.

Too late.

Zoey watched helpless and horrified as the
three teens walked right into the portal. They smiled as though
they were in a circus performance—as though it
wasn’t
real,
so it couldn’t harm them.

And then the portal swallowed them. It
shimmered one last time and vanished with a
crack
.

Chapter 3

Z
oey and Simon
returned to the Hive and secured the giants in a
Maximum-Security Holding Cell.
Then they hurried to Room 1D
to report back to Agent Vargas. He confirmed that the portal
incident on the beach in Houghton Bay, New Zealand was not an
isolated case.

“So far, we’ve gathered accounts of at least
three hundred
of these portals opening all over the world,”
said the big agent as he pushed back his chair and stood.

For a human, Agent Vargas was the tallest
and largest man Zoey had ever seen. He could have easily have
passed as one of the Giant’s distant cousins. He wore a simple
V-neck shirt tucked neatly into a pair of black pants. His long
blond hair was tied in a braid that hung over his large chest.

She couldn’t help it, but with his bulging
muscles, he always made her think of a modern-day Viking.

“And from what we’ve learned,” continued
Agent Vargas, “illegal mystics only stepped through about half of
them. But the other half . . . .”

He paused for a moment. “They just appeared.
But nothing came out. It was like they had opened on their
own.”

“Unfortunately, these new portals were
visible to the curious Mutes. When the portals vanished, they took
hundreds of unsuspecting people with them.”

Zoey sat stunned as she listened. She didn’t
want to be held accountable for all the people lost in the portals.
Nonetheless, she felt personally responsible.

“So do we know what’s causing these portals
to open?” said Simon as though he had read Zoey’s mind. He sat on
the desk next to her, and she felt a sting in her chest as he
finished.

Agent Vargas pressed his big hands on the
desk. When he looked up, his blue eyes met Zoey’s, and she dropped
her gaze. “There’s only one thing that comes to mind—that
woman.
”

“The cat woman,” interrupted Simon. “I knew
it! I
knew
it had something to do with her royal feline
ugliness. I think if we can manage to—” Simon pressed his mouth
shut.

He looked like he wanted to argue, but he
remained silent when he saw Agent Vargas’s scowl. His ears turned
bright red.

Agent Vargas cleared his throat and
continued.

“Yes, Simon, I’m afraid it
is
the
only plausible explanation. But for now, you kids should
concentrate on your field assignments. You still have a lot to
learn and require hours of
experience
before you can truly
call yourselves agents—even with your OSC badges. I’m sure we’ll
know more about these portals in the coming weeks.”