The Witch Hunter's Gauntlet (17 page)

“
Vlad the Impaler? You’re serious?” His voice cracked.

“Very
,” Tasha said.

“So who is this Vlad the Employer?” Zoey asked.

“Vlad the Impaler,” Lucas said, drawing out the last word. “Vlad Dracul. Dracula. As in, Count Dracula.”

“No way,”
Zoey said, more impressed than shocked or scared.

Tasha nodded.

“Wow. Dracula was real?” Zoey asked.

“Is real.”

“He’s still alive, or undead, or whatever?” Zoey was way more impressed by this fact than Sam. “Have you met him?”

“No, and hopefully I never will. But even Dracula was just a normal - albeit completely insane - man before he became a vampire prince. Cervantes was a wizard. He found a loophole no one had ever imagined. Since he became a vampire without dying
, he got to keep his powers, and he can drain the powers from other witches and wizards,” Tasha said darkly.

“But if Sam’s mom killed Cervantes
, wouldn’t he have lost his powers like other wizards?” Zoey asked before Sam had the chance.

“That’s where the Lantern of the Blue Flame comes in. It can completely restore a person to their state just before they died, except for their soul, which is why using the lantern is so terribly wrong. I
t also gives the possessor of the lantern complete control over anyone or anything that has been resurrected by the flame.” Tasha nervously twirled one of her braids. “Except Cervantes already sold his soul a long time ago, so he probably doesn’t even miss it.”

Lucas scratched his head. “So let me get this straight. There is someone out there with his or her own pet wizard-vampire that can increase his power with every new victim. And on our side we have here the daughter
of a couple of archaeologists, a monster hunter, and a retired super-villain. So what does that make you, Zoey? Alien? Robot? Alien robot?”

“Uh.
No,” Zoey said, a bit shocked and offended. Her eyes darted from person to person as if she was making sure that no one really thought she was an alien or a robot.

“I’m sorry. I’m new to all this. I’ve never dealt with vampires and tesseracts and giant mec
hanical grasshoppers before,” Lucas said defensively.

“What giant mechanical grasshoppers?” Zoey asked.

“I don’t know!” he yelled. “But I wouldn’t rule them out at this point.”

Sam could imagine how he felt. There was no way she would be
able to handle all of this if she hadn’t grown up with it. But there was no use freaking out about it either.

“Just calm down.
There are no giant mechanical grasshoppers.”

“Well, actually-,” Doc Frost started. But when he saw the nasty looks Sam and the other girls were giving him
, he stopped.

“Fine.
No grasshoppers. I guess we already have enough problems,” Lucas said, breathing heavily. “So this super-vampire guy is here in Miller’s Grove?”

“Seems that way.”

“Why?”

“Sam.”

Everyone’s attention turned to Sam. Sam was getting really tired of that reaction.

“Thanks
, Tasha,” she said coldly.

“What does he want with Sam?” Lucas asked
, concerned and confused.

“The
Witch Hunter’s Gauntlet,” Tasha said flatly.

“How do you know about that?” Sam asked. Although
, considering Tasha was some sort of secret vampire-hunting ninja maybe she shouldn’t have been surprised that Tasha knew about the supersecret magic gauntlet.

“We
Beaumonts specialize in the supernatural. The Witch Hunter’s Gauntlet is as supernatural as it gets,” Tasha said.

“What is it
?” Zoey asked.

“The Witch Hunter’s
Gauntlet, also known as the Gauntlet of Gilgamesh, the Brace of Hercules, the Hand of Guan Yu, or simply the Hero Glove was fashioned by Middle Eastern mystics thousands of years ago to grant magical powers to a non-magical person. Fight fire with fire. It draws on a user’s personal strengths. Most people couldn’t even use it if they tried. They wouldn’t be strong enough. Their inner fears and doubts would overwhelm them. That is why it lies dormant for generations waiting for a new hero to rise. In the right hands it can grant great strength and power. Gilgamesh, Hercules, Mulan, Beowulf, Boudica, and many others were all great heroes who once wore the gauntlet. It turns up in every great Heroic Age.”

“And this glove is what made them all so powerful?” Lucas asked.

“Partially,” Tasha explained. “The glove draws from the user’s inner strengths as well as their own perception of power, whether that is strength, speed, control over the weather, whatever. Fortunately, most of the people who wore the Hero Glove were unaware of its true potential. On the wrong hand, it could make someone nearly invincible.”

“That thing has been missing for centuries,” Doc Frost said abruptly. “Simon and Samuel used to argue about it all the time. They thought for sure one of them would find it and usher in a new Heroic Age. But like all forms of power
, the glove must be earned and must be given up. It can take several generations for the glove to be found again.”

“Sam’s mother used it to destroy Cervantes twenty years ago,” Tasha said with a Miss Know-it-All head bob.

Doc Frost’s face lit up, making him look ten years younger. “They found it? That’s amazing. Where is it?”

Zoey elbowed Sam gently in the ribs.

Sam didn’t know if her parents would have wanted her to share the secret with this many people, but they were already involved. And Zoey already knew, and Tasha probably knew; she seemed to know everything else.

But most importantly
, Sam didn’t think she would be able to find the Witch Hunter’s Gauntlet without a little help.

“I might know.”

Sam told them all about the hologram and her father’s riddle. They listened politely and quietly. Halfway through, Lucas sat down on the floor, holding his drooping head in his hands.

“No offense,” Lucas said when she had finished
. “But if your dad thought it was so important for you to find this Hero Glove and save the world, why did he have to make it so difficult?”

Sam had had the same thought at least a hundred times.

“He needed to be sure that Sam and only Sam would be able to crack the code and find the Hero Glove,” Tasha answered logically.

“He could have at least given me clues I could figure out,” Sam said.

Seriously, would that have been too much to ask
? She screamed in her head.

“But he did,” Doc Frost said. “Clearly your father designed this riddle specifically for you to solve. You just have to think about the clues from the right perspective.”

Lucas raised his hand. “Uh, I think I know one of the clues.”

He took a moment to bask in everyone’s impressed stares. Sam let him. If he really had cracked part of the riddle, she would have been willing to stare at him in praise all night long.

“Well, spill it!” Zoey clearly was not as patient.

“’A
Pendragon’s weapon waits.’ The only Pendragon I know of is Arthur Pendragon. King Arthur,” He explained. “So the waiting weapon would be the sword Excalibur.”

“Well done, lad.” Doc Frost leaned back in his chair.

“Way to come through with the mythical reference,” Zoey said excitedly.

“Well,” he said with fake modesty. “You can’t play
Battle for Camelot
for thirty-seven hours straight and not learn a little bit of Arthurian legend.”

“Okay
. Anyone know where Excalibur is waiting?” Zoey asked.

“No one knows where it is,” Tasha
said. “Or if they do, they aren’t advertising the fact.”

“Well
, we do,” Lucas said. “It’s wherever the four monuments of endless winter meet.”

“Thank you. T
hat’s very helpful,” Zoey, Tasha, and Sam said in unison.

Sadly, no one else had any brilliant insights into the rest of the clue
s. Naturally everyone expected Sam to know who her oldest friend was, and refused to believe her when she said she didn’t. Soon after, the living room was scattered with every book Doc Frost owned that had even the slightest reference to winter or monuments.

Zoey
had copied down the riddle word for word and was racking her brain to find some sort of pattern or code in the message itself. She tried copying down every second, third, and fourth letter, she assigned numbers to each letter and then to each word, she wrote words backwards,     as well as a dozen other things Sam didn’t really understand. All the while, Doc Frost kept trying to tell her that she was overthinking the problem. The answer was somewhere in Sam’s mind. She just had to unlock it.

Out of the corner of her eye Sam watched as Lucas’
s head slowly slumped lower and lower until he turned the history book in front of him into a pillow. The adrenaline rush was wearing off, and everyone was crashing.

Doc Frost rubbed the corners of his tired
, baggy eyes. “Okay, let’s simplify this down to the most basic elements possible. Sam, I need you to think of any references your parents made to monuments. Any kinds of monuments.”

Sam imagined that would be a tall order for anyone, let alone someone whose parents were globe
-trotting archaeologists. She thought back over boring stories they told her about the Arc de Triumph or Hadrian’s Wall. Now those boring stories were some of Sam’s most treasured memories. To this day she still regretted never getting to hear the boring stories about the places in her snow globes.

“Oh, no
way!” she yelled at the top of her lungs.

Lucas sat up with a start, a string of drool attaching his head to the book he was resting on, while everyone else stared at her like she was mad.

“I know what the monuments are,” she clarified, speaking louder than she really meant to. “The Great Pyramid, the Statue of Liberty, the Eiffel Tower, and the Sphinx.”

Her heart was pounding in her ears. She was more excited at this moment than she had ever been in her life. It had been so obvious all this time; she just wanted to slap herself.

“My dad gave me snow globes of all of them when I was a kid. He said we were going to visit them all some day.”

“Someone
get a map and a pen,” Doc Frost ordered.

Quickly they unfolded a world map and Zoey drew little sketches representing the four monuments on their respective locations.

“Maybe,” Zoey said to herself. She drew lines connecting the four spots. Unfortunately, the Sphinx and Great Pyramid were so close together that, instead of making a nice box with an X inside, it became a giant lopsided trapezoid.

“Maybe it’s an arrow,” Lucas said.

“Pointing which way?” Tasha asked.

“Good point,” he said glumly.

“Maybe it is somewhere inside the trapezoid,” Zoey offered.

“Well good, so we’ve narrowed it down to
New York, Africa, Europe, or the Atlantic Ocean,” Tasha said, annoyed.

Lucas snapped his fingers.
“Atlantis.”

“It is not in Atlantis,” Tasha said.

Lucas crossed his arms and tilted his head. “Oh, and I suppose you know where Atlantis is.”

“No. But how in the world is Sam supposed to find Atlantis?”

“I don’t know. Magic?”

Doc Frost breathed out slowly and loudly. Tasha and Lucas took the hint and calmed down.

“If you recall, the clue says Sam has to go to the place where the monuments meet,” he said.

“Maybe the Hero Glove is broken into four pieces and hidden at each of those places. That’s how they would do it in a video game,” Lucas offered.

“Maybe it meant the spot where the snow globes originally were,” Zoey said.

“That can’t be it,” Sam said with great certainty. “We moved around a lot in those days and the snow globes were always in my room, and I think I would have noticed if Excalibur was in there.”

“What if-“

There’s no telling how long they would have kept up their wild guessing if there hadn’t been a knock at the door.

Doc Frost answered it to find Agent Rosenberg standing there in her MGU sweatshirt and sweatpants. Sam hadn’t seen anyone so mad in years.

“You are all past curfew.”

The next couples days were easily the most exciting Sam had had in years.

Sam was feeling so
confident that the four of them—five, counting Doc Frost--would crack the riddle, stop Cervantes, and generally foil the plans of the unknown bad guy – who they had brilliantly nicknamed Bad Guy – that she thought she just might be able to go to the Halloween Dance after all. She started tossing around costume ideas in the back of her brain. In the last few years she had trick-or-treated as a penguin, Hermione Granger, and Pippi Longstocking, but she wanted something a little more grownup and fashion-forward for the big dance.

Since Sam had absolutely no idea how to do that
, she decided to put herself in Zoey’s capable hands; however, when she got to English class she found Zoey waiting with exciting, confusing news. Tasha had sent her a text message that consisted of nothing more than seven smiley faces. She hadn’t responded to any of Zoey’s pleas for more information.

So for now Sam was waiting
with Zoey for Tasha to show up to class. A class Sam would probably have a solid B in if Professor Woolf didn’t take so many points off for grammatical errors and typos. Sam imagined Professor Woolf as the type of person who pointed out punctuation and spelling errors in online chat rooms. Assuming anyone was foolish enough to chat with her.

Today was the day that Professor Woolf
was going to hand back the midterm papers. Sam had pulled an all-nighter finishing her paper on
Treasure Island,
which she had actually really enjoyed even though she only picked the book because it had been made into a movie about a million times. The Muppet version was her favorite. She expected another C+ for her efforts.

Zoey
clapped her hands together and pointed when she saw Tasha in the doorway. She reminded Sam of a little kid at the zoo for the first time.

Tasha sat down next to Sam
, trying to pretend like nothing was going on, but she couldn’t quite keep herself from smiling, and if she tried any harder she was likely to hurt herself.

“So?”
Zoey asked dragging the word out.

“I have a date for the Halloween Ball,” Tasha said.

“Uh-huh. With who?”

“Dave Schwartz.” She sat back as if a great pressure had been released.

“Not bad.” Zoey nodded approvingly.

That seemed like quite the understatement to Sam. Dave Schwartz was the Junior Captain of the gymnastics team. He was over six feet tall
, with short blond hair that he gelled in that messy way boys do to make it look like they don’t care about their hair. It looked good on him, though.

“When did he ask?”

“After practice this morning,” Tasha said. “He asked me to help him put the mats away, and once everyone else was gone he asked.”

“Just like that?”
Zoey asked.

“Yep.”

“No robots?” Zoey asked, half joking, half jealous.

“No.” Tasha turned her gaze on Sam. “Has-“

But just then Professor Woolf entered the room. Everyone stopped talking and found a desk.

Sam noticed that she wasn’t carrying a stack of graded papers. It looked like she would have to wait another day to get her C. Professor Woolf didn’t walk over to her desk like normal
, either. Instead she stood in front of the class, nervously folding and unfolding her hands.

“Class, I have the unfortunate duty of passing on some upsetting news.”

Sam felt her heart drop in her chest.

“Three students, Mary Stevens, Joy Burkhart, and
Beth Ringdale, were killed the other night in a tragic car accident.”

No one spoke for several seconds. Professor Woolf took a steadying breath and continued.

“Some of you may have known the girls. All three were seniors and members of the varsity cheerleading squad. There will be a memorial held on Thursday on the East Lawn. Also, all classes are cancelled for the rest of the day. Dr. Wong and the rest of the school’s psychology department will be available for any students who need to discuss their feelings on this sad day.”

They ran back to the dorm the moment Professor Woolf let them out of class. Once they were safe in Sam and Zoey’s room
, Tasha explained that it was common practice to pass off vampire victims as the victims of mundane accidents, traffic accidents being the most popular. Sam couldn’t help wondering if the parents of the three girls knew what had really happened to their daughters. After all, there weren’t any bodies.

The days leading up to the memorial were uneventful. Even the students who didn’t know the girls were respectfully subdued and thoughtful. The teachers seemed to go lighter on the homework as well. Sam also noticed that more people seemed to be wearing crosses around their necks. But whether this was as a sign of mourning or something else
, she didn’t know.

The actual memorial service was short and respectful. Principal Shepherd and the cheerleading coach said a few nice words about the girls. A pedestal was erected outside the football stadium
, and the school was commissioning a statue in their honor.

Tiffany and her posse tried to turn the event into a fashion show by wearing the latest thing in funeral apparel. Fortunately
, most of the student body was classier than that.

Sam couldn’t go a minute without thinking about the girls and how their deaths had been because of her. Someone was trying to stop her from finding the
Witch Hunter’s Gauntlet. Whoever Bad Guy was, he or she didn’t mind hurting innocent people to get to her.

What if they attacked someone close to her next time? Tasha might
be able to take care of herself, but what about Zoey or Lucas? They didn’t deserve to be a part of this. They didn’t grow up training to fight monsters. They were just good people who had the misfortune of making friends with Sam.

She thought about leaving school. But she couldn’t ask Helen or Harold to come home early. Besides
, they were probably safer where they were. For now, Sam was going to have to stay at Miller’s Grove and trust that the BEA would do their best to keep everyone safe.

Sam decided the best thing she could do was turn into a hermit, or was it hermitess? Either way
, she spent most of her time outside of class in her room, frantically Googling for any information she could find on the monuments in her snow globes.

S
tarting her new life of seclusion turned out to be easier than she had imagined. Tasha had redoubled her efforts to protect campus from vampires and other things that go bump in the night. She was living on Red Bull and four hours of sleep a night.

Zoey
had also become incredibly busy recently working with Doc Frost on the hovercar. She was so excited about it that she even put off working on her big metal ring to spend most of her time down in the lab. Sam couldn’t blame her; she would rather be working on the flying car too.

In fact, the only person who wouldn’t leave her alone was Lucas. Every day after class he asked her if she w
anted to play one of his hundreds of video games or watch one of his hundreds of cartoons. Fortunately she could use her dislike of Natch as a good excuse not to go to his room and her mountain of homework as a good reason to not let him visit her room. It just seemed safer if they weren’t seen together.

She could still chat and play games with Lucas online without Bad Guy knowing about it
, though. She could even beat him sometimes, unless he was letting her win, which was likely; he was a video game champion, after all; and seriously, nobody could possibly be that bad at Doodle Jump, especially not someone who had made it to the 256
th
level of Pac-Man. And, of course, she could still see him in class. Although even that was becoming more difficult with all the projects and lab assignments they were getting recently.

She had thought that maybe now that they were partners in trying to save the world
, Doc Frost would go a little easier on them in the homework department. But apparently it was just as important that they compare the velocities of falling objects on Earth to those on Mars and Venus. Then on Thursday, Doc Frost announced that they were heading to the college to watch some sort of test.

He had arranged for a fleet of security golf carts to bus the class over to the Ballistics Testing Lab. Sam an
d Lucas shared a cart with Felix and Leroy.

“Do you think
he’s going to show us the, uh-” Lucas glanced at Felix and Leroy, who were busy having a paper ball fight with the cart next to them. “That special project of his?”

“
Zoey calls it the Model T,” Sam said.

“The Model T, huh?
Kinda funny. Anyway, I bet he finally got it working.”

“I don’t think so. Last I heard
it was still too heavy. Zoey probably would have told me if they had solved it.”

S
he was pretty sure Zoey would have told her.

“How is Zoey? I haven’t seen her in a while. I guess she’s too cool to come eat lunch with us now.” He batted away a stray paper wad.

“It is insane. She spends more time in the lab than I do in class. Sometimes she doesn’t even get back until two in the morning.” Sam wasn’t sleeping well these days, so she always knew when Zoey got back.

“
Even with that drill sergeant RA of yours?” Lucas asked. “She was all over us that night for being past curfew.”

Amy certainly hadn’t made any friends the night she busted them at Doc Frost’s house. Sam understood it was part of Agent Rosenberg’s job to protect her
, but she had a feeling she would be a pretty strict Resident Advisor anyway. Not like Lucas’ RA Jeff. Apparently he was in a band, so he was usually out later than any of the boys on their hall. It wasn’t fair.

Speaking of unfair.

“Zoey got some sort of special GET OUT OF TROUBLE FREE CARD from Dean Futuro so she can work in the lab.”

“Wow,” he said
, genuinely impressed. “She’s still going to the Masquerade Ball though, right?”

“Um, yeah.
Pretty sure.” She thought about it for a moment. “Why?”

“Oh, I was just wondering,” he said. “I just thought maybe-“

“Everybody out!” the driver yelled.

They had reached the Ballistics Testing Lab. It turned out to be a
large airplane hangar with no windows or any interesting features at all. Doc Frost led them all into a small observation room that looked out onto the main testing range. Dozens of college students in white lab coats were scurrying around between a large metal wall that had been set up in the middle of the room and some sort of giant ray gun about twice the size of a UPS truck at the far end of the room. The multitude of burn marks on the walls and spiderwebbing cracks in the concrete floor told Sam that some seriously destructive testing had been done in this room.

And if Doc Frost’s excitement was any clue, this was going to be particularly destructive.

She couldn’t wait.

“Everyone take one,
pass it along,” he said as he set a cardboard box full of goggles down on the table. “Safety first, very important.”

Lucas reached in and pulled out two pairs of goggles, handing the second pair to Sam with a questioning look. She understood why he found them so weird. They weren’t the usual plastic safety goggles she was used to. These were ugly brown hard rubber
goggles with dark lenses like the ones worn by the scientists waiting for the first atomic bomb to go off in those old grainy films. Lucas must have realized this too, since he was making explosion motions with his hands.

“This is going to be awesome,” he whispered as he slipped the goggles on. He looked like a bug.

She put hers on, sure that she looked like a bug too.

“What exactly are we expecting to see?”
Sharon asked eyeing her goggles suspiciously.

Doc Frost clapped his hands.

“Ah, that is a very good question.”

He reached in his lab coat pocket and pulled out a shiny piece of metal slightly larger than a playing card.

“This is why we are here.” He held the metal up for everyone to see. “A little composite metal created by Professor Larson. It is as light as aluminum and twice as strong as titanium. She calls it larsonite.”

He waved the class over to the window.

“In fact, that is Professor Larson in the observation room on the other side. Everybody wave.”

The whole class waved. Professor Larson and her college class waved back. They were far away
, but Sam could tell they were all wearing the same bulky goggles.

“
That wall down there is a foot-and-a-half thick slab of pure larsonite. So far it has proven highly resistant to every weapon we have thrown at it,” he said excitedly. “So now Professor Larson thinks she has developed the ultimate indestructible metal. Meanwhile, Dr. Gupta has used one of my ion generators to build that ion cannon down there. In theory it is the most powerful gun on the planet, capable of blasting a hole through anything.”