The Witch Hunter's Gauntlet (23 page)

Sick and
Wrong were standing outside of the circle filming everything.

“Nice going guys,” Natch said.

“We’re going to have the best blooper reel ever,” Sick said, very excited. He tapped Wrong on the shoulder. “Do not stop filming.”

Sam stepped through the circle. “How’s it going
, cousin?”

“Second cousin,” Zack snapped.

“And don’t you forget it,” Sam said. It was amazing how confident she felt with an army of Jedi Masters and Klingon warriors watching her back. “Hand over the bear.”

“You’d better do it
, Mr. McQueen,” Coach Powers said.

Coach Powers, Sherry Hoyle, Tasha, Zoey, and Dave all stood outside the circle
, glaring at Zack. Zoey held the holographic projector in her arms, which resulted in the weird image of Zoey holding Justin Timberlake in the air by his feet.

“
Oooh,” Zack said mockingly as he violently shook Mr. Hopscotch.

“Stop it!” Sam yelled.

“Aw, Sammy wants her dolly back.” He pulled a lighter out of his pocket and held it dangerously close to Mr. Hopscotch’s foot.

“Please don’t. He’s my oldest friend.”

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Tasha and Zoey nod.

“That’s all I needed to hear,” someone whispered in her ear.

And that’s when everything went black.

With absolutely no lights and no windows the dance hall was almost completely blacked out. The faint flicker of the jack-o-lanterns lit up the room just enough to turn everyone into faceless silhouettes. At first Sam thought that the power had simply gone out. But that wouldn’t explain why the Jedi’s swords had stopped glowing, or why the hologram had winked out.

Aside from some shuffling of feet no one made a sound, which made it all the worse when something gigantic roared outside.

T
he entire room gasped and stared through the darkness in the direction of the roar. Sam wasn’t sure if it was some sort of animal or metal being torn apart, but it made her blood run cold.

“Everyone remain calm,” Coach Powers yelled commandingly from somewhere in the darkness.

Nothing makes people freak out more than someone telling them to stay calm. The room was awash in worried whispering and then, just as instantly as they had gone out, the lights flickered back on.

“See
,” Coach Powers said. “The backup generators kicked in.”

Sam’s eyes readjusted to the light just enough to see a large fireball emblem sown onto the back of Coach Powers’ jacket before the room was plunged into darkness again.

Coach Powers cursed loudly.

Rubbing her eyes
, Sam reflected on what else she had seen in her half-second of vision. Mr. Hopscotch was missing, and Zack was looking angrily at someone in a white lab coat.

The lights snapped on again.

“And now the backup backup generators,” Coach Powers said triumphantly.

“And out they go again,” the lab coat wearing figure said
, holding up a gold pocket watch in his right hand. Mr. Hopscotch hung limply by the leg in his left.

“He’s got Mr. Hopscotch!” Sam yelled as the lights went out again.

Sam felt someone rush past her towards the lab coat guy. She would have bet everything she had that it was Tasha.

She was right. Up ahead in the darkness
, she heard Tasha grunt as if she was locked in combat.

Someone hit someone else very hard. And the loser flopped to the floor.

People were shouting around trying to find out who was hurt. A blue beam of light cut through the darkness, casting everyone around it in an eerie glow. Sam squinted into the light to see that it was coming from the head of Dean Futuro’s cane.

Dean
Futuro casually leaned on the cane, surveying the scene with a sneer. Sam noticed a series of other tiny lights and possibly buttons that twinkled and blinked along the length of the cane like jewels. In the dark she could see faint staticky sparks swirling around Dean Futuro in an organized pattern, making a bell-like shape around him.

He had a force field of some kind.

“Children, be quiet,” Dean Futuro said in a very aggravated voice. “Which one of you is messing with my power?”

“That would be me,” the lab coat guy said happily.

Tasha was lying on the floor, possibly unconscious, next to the mysterious guy in the lab coat. In the blue glow Sam finally got a clear view of him. He had white hair, made blue by the light, and he had lost a lot of weight, but Sam recognized him immediately.

“Jerry?”

He smiled at her.

“Actually, it
’s Nero.”

“Nero?” That name was coming up too often
lately. “Like Alexander Nero?”

“Very good
, Sam,” he said. “Alexander Nero Sr. was my father.”

“The
man who bravely built his company on research stolen from his closest friends,” Dean Futuro added.

Slowly Nero
’s smile melted into a scowl.

“Do you really think this is the proper
time to make me angry? Especially considering I’ve just shut down all of your defenses with my electromagnetic pulse generators.”

“Oh, I still have defenses at my disposal, dear boy,” Dean Futuro said with a devilish glint in his eye.

Sam suddenly noticed that several campus security guards had used the darkness to discreetly mingle into the crowd. 

“Please,” Nero
said disapprovingly. “You’re resorting to physical violence already?”

“What can I say, it’s a c
lassic.” Dean Futuro shrugged.

“Believe me, I’d like nothing better than to beat the snot out of your goons and snap that cane of yours in half, but I have a very
tight schedule to keep,” Nero said, checking his watch. He idly crammed Mr. Hopscotch into his other pocket as he spoke.

“In, three, two, one.”
 

A bright red glow on the west wall caught Sam’s eye. Red flames were licking their way out of the thin crack between the double doors. People backed away.

The doors burst open, and the flames snaked their way into the ballroom, encircling the panicked students and teachers.

“Everyone
remain calm,” Coach Powers said again. Several of the teachers echoed him.

“This is awesome.”

Sam turned to see who had said such an obviously stupid thing.

Sick poked at the
flames with one of the Klingons’ swords. He pulled it back and examined the places where it had touched the fire. It was completely unharmed.

“These are the most amazing speci
al effects I have ever seen,” Sick said to Nero, formerly Jerry. “How do you do it?”

Now that she thought about it
, Sam realized that if the fire was real, the room would be filling up with smoke right now, setting off the sprinklers, and the floor would look burnt or something, but it appeared completely fine.

“
Ow.” Wrong had put his entire hand into the flame. It obviously hurt him, but when he yanked it back out his hand looked fine.

Nero
laughed.

“Big C,” he shouted. “Come and introduce yourself. You have a fan.”

A figure appeared in the doorway. It walked straight through the fire without even flinching. As it emerged from the flames, Sam saw that it was a handsome, tall man with long, red hair. He wore silver armor with a writhing gold dragon on the chest plate. A dozen tiny red sparks flew out of his right hand like a swarm of fireflies buzzing into the crowd. Suddenly all of the security guards slumped to the floor.

Several of the sparks were
dive-bombing Dean Futuro’s force field, but each one fizzled away as it hit.

“We’ve got three for pick
up Cervantes,” Nero said.

So it was Cervantes. Sam had never really bothered to imagine him as anything more than a cartoony vampire before. But seeing him in person
, he looked remarkably like a real person--a real person with a strange fashion sense and more magical power than anyone else on the planet.

And his roving eyes had landed on her.

“You.” His eyes turned red as they locked onto Sam. He hunched over like a cat ready to pounce.

“Down
, boy,” Nero ordered. “We have a schedule to keep, remember? There will be time for revenge later.”

Cerva
ntes flashed his fangs at Nero, but reluctantly stood up straight again. “Who do you want?”

“We need Mr. McQueen, Dr. Frost,
and Miss Dalal,” Nero said, pointing at each of them in turn.

“Leave them alone,” Sam yelled. “Take me.”

She didn’t know where that came from, but she stood by it.

Nero
just laughed.

“The funny thing, this whole thing was actually set up to kidnap you,” he said spreading his arms. “Then Cervantes here would tear your mind apart to reveal your oldest friend. But now
you are completely useless, so I’ll let you keep your brain. Congratulations.”

Cervantes snapped his fingers and Zack, Doc Frost, and Zoey vanished in bursts of green light.

“Very cool,” a boy in a New York Yankees uniform said as he waved his hand through the air where Zoey had been standing.

People actually started clapping and cheering as if this was all some sort of elaborate Halloween magic act. But Sam was too worried about her friends to bother to correct them. She
knelt down to check on Tasha.

“Thank you, thank you,” Nero
said with a gracious wave. “But we really must be going.”

Cerva
ntes ignored Nero, keeping his focus on Sam instead. The smile spreading across his face didn’t seem to contain any joy, just teeth.

“Run,” Tasha said as she sat up
, trying to place her body between Sam and Cervantes.

A
burst of lightning crackled over her shoulder, striking Cervantes in the chest. He howled in pain as the force of the blast knocked him backward through the double doors.

Nero
snapped his pocket watch shut.

“Later,” he yelled
as he ran for the door, leaping through the flames along the way.

“Got another one of those?” Tasha asked someone behind Sam.

Sam turned her head to see Coach Powers standing next to her with the ray gun still trained on the double doors. A spark of electricity danced on the tip. It clearly wasn’t just for show.

“Just the one,” he said. “And I think it just made him mad.”

Sam looked back to Tasha. “What happened to Zoey and Doc Frost?”

“They’re fine,” Tasha said
, nursing her head. “It was a teleportation spell. The maximum range is two hundred yards. They didn’t go far.”

“Then we have to find them.”

“We have to get that bear back,” Tasha said to Coach Powers.

“The teddy bear?”

“Yes,” Tasha said, standing up. “It is a very important present from her parents.”

“I see,” he said with a weighty nod.

“And we have to save Zoey and Doc Frost,” Sam said, just in case either of them forgot. She left out Zack, but they should probably save him too. If they had time.

“
I can’t just leave all these students,” Coach Powers said, clearly torn.

But a quick look around revealed that the students were fin
e. Most of them seemed to be having a good time. They probably still thought this was all some sort of magic show, anyway. In fact, a crowd had formed near the refreshments table, where laughing students were throwing different bits of food into the red flames. The few students that did seem freaked out were gathered around Mr. Norton and the other chaperones.

No one was standing around Dean Futuro
though. Not that Sam was surprised. He seemed to be studying Sam, waiting to see what she was going to do.

“Right, let
’s go,” Coach Powers said.

“Where are we going?”
Natch asked.

Sam, Tasha, and Coach Powers turned as one to stare at Natch. In all the excitement Sam had completely forgotten about her date
, who had been standing by her side the entire time.

“Uh, I don’t think you want to go with us,” Sam said as politely as she could muster
under the circumstances.

“Stay here with Dave,” Tasha said.

“I have absolutely no idea what is going on here,” Natch started. “But I’m going with the guy with the laser blaster.”

“Fine, come on,” Sam said. They didn’t have time to argue.

They quickly ran into their first obstacle, the ring of fire.

“Just run through it,” Tasha yelled.

“Are you nuts?” Natch asked.

Tasha ran through the fire, screaming in pain the entire way.
When she made it to the other side her entire body was shaking and she was breathing heavily, but she looked fine.

“It hurts as much as real fire, but it doesn’t do any physical damage,” she said.

“Yeah, right,” Natch said.

“Just go,” Coach Powers bellowed
, shoving Natch and Sam through the flames.

The pain was insane. Every inch
of Sam’s body was instantly fried. She forgot that she even had arms and legs and became nothing more than a ball of pain. It was so intense she just hoped she would pass out.

And then it was over.

Coach Powers had pushed Sam and Natch the entire way through the flames. All three of them were breathing heavily and patting their bodies to put out the non-existent flames.

“What kind of crazy stuff are you
people into?” Natch asked, still patting his shoulders.

Tasha rolled her eyes at him.

Coach Powers led them out of the back door of the ballroom and out into the crisp October night. It was a good thing the moon was almost full; without the lights on, Sam could barely see where she was going.

“It’s so dark,” she said.
Jerry’s EMP fried the circuits of every electronic device on campus,” Natch said bitterly. “Except for the Dean’s cane and your laser pistol, for some reason.”