by Bret Schulte
“Ow,” he howled as he fell to the floor.
“Out,” Coach Powers yelled with joy.
Natch skulked off the court to join the others on the sidelines.
The teams shrank rapidly. The blue team finally started aiming for Sam due to a lack of more reasonable targets. Three balls zeroed in on her at the same time. Sam had to lean back and jump Matrix-style to avoid all three.
“Hey,” Sabrina yelled. She was nursing her right shoulder where one of the balls Sam had dodged had hit her.
As she walked off the court she gave her boyfriend Derek, who was on the blue team and had thrown that particular ball, such a nasty look that he just stopped moving and let a ball hit him.
“Idiot,” Zack yelled at him as he sheepishly walked off the court.
Zack was getting really vicious now. He caught a ball thrown at him and hurled it with a savage grunt, catching Tasha in the leg.
“Ha ha,” he yelled through gritted teeth.
Rebecca saw her chance and threw a ball at his gloating head, but he reached out and caught it. As Rebecca walked off the court, Sam found herself in a very familiar position. She was the lone survivor of her team. There were five members of the blue team left, including Zack, and there was only one ball left on her side of the court. Not that it mattered much. She was at the part where her mad dodgeball skills always failed her. She could run and dodge and taunt like no one else, but sadly, she could not catch or throw to save her life.
“Come on, Sam,” Tasha yelled from the sidelines.
“Get ‘em,” Sabrina chimed in.
Sam reached for the one ball on her side and suddenly three red balls flew at her. She picked up the ball just in time to use it as a shield, deflecting the ball headed straight at her. By dropping to the floor she let the other two soar over her.
“Rock on, Sam,” Tasha yelled.
Now the only armed member of the blue team was Zack.
“Come and get me,” he said as he did a little dance.
“That’s not sportsmanlike behavior, McQueen,” Coach Powers shouted.
“Sorry, Spaceman,” Zack replied.
“Watch it, McQueen.”
Sam didn’t think being called “Spaceman” was very insulting, although it seemed a bit random.
“Sam, Sam, Sam,” Tasha started chanting. Soon the rest of the red team was chanting along with her, and even Derek was chanting from the blue team’s side, no doubt due to another nasty look from Sabrina.
Sam knew they were just being nice, but she really didn’t need the pressure right now.
Zack was busy spinning the ball on his finger.
The chanting continued.
She was running out of options. She either had to throw the ball, which would probably be caught, let Zack hit her, or stand there until class was over. There was no way she was letting Zack tag her out. She reached back and prepared to throw. But just then Zack threw his ball. Sam didn’t have enough time to bring her ball up to block, so she let it slip from her fingers and jumped sideways out of the way.
The ball barely slipped by, but she jumped so awkwardly that she couldn’t bring her feet back under her to land, and she fell flat on her back.
All five of the balls were now on her side of the court.
The chanting grew even louder. Zack was laughing and pumping his fist in the air. Sam really had no other choice now. She couldn’t just stand there for the next thirty-seven minutes. She picked up a ball and felt the weight of it in her hands. She had slightly better aim when she threw underhanded, and she walked up to the line to cut the distance between them.
He stood there ready to catch it.
“Sam, Sam, Sam,” the chanted continued.
She reached back and-
DEENT DEENT DEENT.
Alarm sirens went off throughout the building.
Coach Powers rushed out into the middle of the court.
“Everyone. Everyone stay calm,” he said to the assembled students who had rushed off of the sideline benches.
“Is it a fire?” someone asked. “Shouldn’t we be going outside?”
“That is not the fire alarm,” he answered. “It is best that we just stay here until-“
He was cut off by the sounds of the big metal double doors located all around the building flying open. Suddenly a dozen campus security guards appeared; all of them had their stun guns drawn.
“Everyone stay calm,” Coach Powers repeated. “This is all a part of the standard drill, I assure you.”
“Drill for what?” Derek asked.
“I’m sure it is nothing to worry about,” Coach Powers said. He sounded a bit annoyed. “Dean Futuro doesn’t like uninvited guests showing up on school grounds. Those alarms sound when certain people show up without calling first.”
Sam was very curious to know who these “certain people” were, but before she could ask, two of the security officers stepped up to Coach Powers.
“We need two of your students. Hathaway and McQueen,” the guard said.
He clearly didn’t know to whom the names belonged because Sam and Zack were standing a foot away and he didn’t even look at them.
Coach Powers stood silently for a second. “All right. Hathaway, McQueen, you’re up. The rest of you hit the showers. And someone please turn that alarm off.”
Sam looked back at Tasha, who had a very concerned look on her face. Sam shrugged and frowned a little bit; she had no idea what was going on. Zack didn’t seem too worried, but maybe he was just trying to look calmer than he really was to freak Sam out even more.
Sam followed the guards out of the gym. The good news was that the rain had stopped, but a biting wind had set in, chilling her to the bone. If only they would have given her a few minutes to change out of her gym clothes.
If Zack was cold he didn’t show it. In fact, he was perfectly content as he climbed into the back of the guards’ little golf-cartlike vehicle.
Sam and Zack sat silently in the back seat together all the way across campus, around Lake Laverne, and through the college grounds. They finally stopped outside of a large, authoritative-looking building with tiny windows and dead vines still clinging to its walls. They were bustled up through a sparsely decorated marble lobby, past a rather bored-looking secretary, and through a set of large oak doors into the office of Dean Alistair Futuro himself.
He squinted at them, his eyes slowly scanning from Sam to Zack and back again.
The guards silently stepped back to guard the door.
Sam looked around in wonder. The office was exceptionally large, with a marble floor and no windows. Instead of windows, the walls were lined with large television screens showing scenes from different places around the world ranging from a tropical jungle to a windy mountaintop to the street in front of the Eiffel Tower. Sam couldn’t tell for sure, but it looked like they were live images. She also couldn’t decide if Dean Futuro’s desk was comically large or if he was comically small.
But it was the other people in the room who really drew her attention. Sitting in one of the plump leather chairs in front of Dean Futuro’s desk was Agent Sampson, and sitting across from him was Constable Albion. From the looks of it, Sam would wager good money that the two men spent the last several minutes staring angrily at each other.
“There she is,” Constable Albion said, rising from his chair. “The girl who unleashed the beast upon us.”
Before she knew what was happening, Sam was floating in the air, her arms and legs pinned by some unseen force, while alarms were going off all around her again.
The two guards drew their stun guns, but Agent Sampson was fastest on the draw. He withdrew some sort of fancy ray gun from the breast pocket of his suit and had it trained on Albion’s hands in no time. It was only now that Sam realized that Albion’s hands were glowing a dull yellow.
“Albion, would you kindly stop floating my students around my office and setting off my magic detectors,” Dean Futuro said calmly. “You may n
ot have realized this, but they are quite annoying.”
“You are harboring a felon here, Futuro,” Albion said.
“And you are about to get zapped like you wouldn’t believe,” Dean Futuro said as he steepled his fingers.
The glowing stopped and Sam fell to the floor. She just barely got her footing in time to not fall flat on her face. Zack cracked a bit of a smile, but Sam was terrified. She didn’t know what was going on or why Constable Albion had come back into her life; but, no doubt, it had something to do with some magical doodad she supposedly had stolen or some other crazy thing she had never even heard of before.
“So what did I do now?” Sam asked.
“The resurrection of a known murderer leading to the deaths of twenty-three wizards and witches, resulting in the siring of at least fifteen new vampires,” Albion rattled off in rapid-fire police speech.
Every eye in the room was on Sam. Even Zack seemed a bit shocked and maybe even a little impressed.
“What?” Sam squeaked out, completely dumbfounded.
Agent Sampson slipped his ray gun back into his pocket and turned in his chair to face Sam. “It appears Prince Cervantes has returned.”
“Returned!” Albion shouted. His nostrils were flaring wildly. “He did not simply return. No one, not even Cervantes could return from death. He was brought back. Brought back by her.”
Sam’s eyes locked on the yellow tipped finger that was pointing accusingly at her.
“You have no basis for that accusation. In fact, we have sufficient evidence that Ms. Hathaway never left Presley, Illinois all summer and has stayed on school grounds the entire semester,” Agent Sampson said.
Sam’s life seemed pretty dull when described out loud like that.
“Evidence.” Albion spat the word out. “You think I don’t know that you can alter pictures with your computers? We are not as naive as you think.”
“You didn’t know about my magic detectors,” Dean Futuro said.
“How much more of your trickery do you expect the ISG to put up with, Futuro?” Albion clinched his fist and it seemed to Sam that he would have liked nothing better than to punch the frail old man as hard as he possibly could. But he was greatly outnumbered and knew it. He slowly sat back down, but his glare could freeze lava.
“Listen, is anyone going to tell us why we are here?” Zack asked. Apparently now that Constable Albion was somewhat subdued, Zack’s insanely overdeveloped confidence was rearing its ugly head again.
“You are here, Mr. McQueen,” Dean Futuro began, “because the ISG has lost control of the magical community and needs someone else to blame for their inadequacies.”
He shifted his gaze to Albion--who was about ready to explode, from the looks of him.
Agent Sampson quickly interjected. “Prince Cervantes—or, quite possibly, someone who has assumed the alias of Prince Cervantes--has begun terrorizing the magical communities of Europe and Africa. There has even been one unconfirmed Cervantes sighting in Japan.”
“But my parents killed Cervantes,” Sam said. She wasn’t sure if and how a vampire could come back from the dead.
“Yes, they did,” Agent Sampson said in a serious tone. “That is why we need to talk to you, both of you.”
“What have you done with the Lantern of the Blue Flame?” Albion snarled. His eyes were wild, and he was snorting through his nose.
Dean Futuro smiled as he typed away on the laptop on his desk. He actually smiled. It was the single creepiest thing Sam had ever seen in her life. Judging by the way the wrinkles on his face ran away from his smile rather than with it, Sam figured he must not smile much.
“What is so special about this thingy?” Sam asked. She was so tired of being out of the loop.
Zack snorted in amusement.
“You don’t know what it does?”
“No, and no one will tell me!”
“It brings people back from the dead,” Agent Sampson said.
Well, that didn’t seem possible.
“It does what?”
“Roughly three thousand years ago, the Great Dragons of China left this realm for the Transcendental Spheres,” Agent Sampson explained. “Before they left, one of them, a blue Spirit Dragon, lit a lantern with its breath, the breath of Eternal Life. The Lantern of the Blue Flame, as it came to be known, allowed anyone who was in possession of it to bring people or animals back to life. It also gave the possessor complete control over the things he or she brought back.”
“Zombie armies,” Zack said excitedly.
“Yes,” Agent Sampson said dismissively. “That is why it was so fortunate that the Lantern disappeared and also why it was so sought after over the centuries. It was assumed to be lost forever until Dr. Samuel Hathaway, Sr. found it.”
“And then the fool turned it over to the ISG,” Dean Futuro mumbled from behind his computer screen.
“Only after several years of the ISG petitioning the BEA for the return of a priceless relic that clearly belonged to us in the first place,” Albion snapped.
“Finders keepers,” the old man replied. It was strange to see someone so old acting so childish.
“Anyway,” Agent Sampson said, steering the conversation back on course. “The lantern is one of the extremely few items on this planet that could resurrect a slain vampire. That is why we were so concerned when it was stolen four months ago.”
“Who would want to resurrect a vampire wizard?” Sam asked.
“Two names spring to mind.” Albion bared his teeth in a nasty self-righteous grin. “Hathaway and McQueen.”
Sam had more than enough of this. “Why do you people keep thinking I would steal this thing?”
“Because your names are scary to them,” Dean Futuro said, cutting off both Agent Sampson and Constable Albion. “The Hathaways and McQueens have been the premier names in relic acquisition for generations. If anyone was going to steal the Lantern of the Blue Flame from a high-security magical vault, it would have to be someone from either of those two families, especially after the death of that fraud and opportunist Alexander Nero Sr. No one else has embarrassed the ISG quite as thoroughly. Isn’t that right, Albion?”
Albion huffed and looked away.
Dean Futuro hit a button on his computer, and the screen showing a shot of the Eiffel Tower turned into a shot of an icy windblown cliff overlooking an ocean somewhere.
“Does that look familiar to anyone?” Dean Futuro asked, pointing his cane at the screen.
Sam nodded. She wasn’t likely to forget that cliff anytime soon.
“Ellesmere Island,” Zack said.
“Very good, Mr. McQueen,” Dean Futuro said with genuine praise.
“How about this?”
One of the screens behind Dean Futuro changed from a shot of a tropical beach to some unknown, dark, stone-walled room with what appeared to be hundreds of dead bats all over the frost-covered floor.
“Baldorag Castle I presume,” Zack said, all smart-alecky.
“Correct again.”
Albion jumped to his feet and slammed his fist on the dean’s desk.
“This is insufferable. You claim to be an ally, and yet you spy on us-“
“Unlike you with your silly crystal balls, oracle pools, and mind reading?” Dean Futuro interrupted.
“What about your secret magic detectors?”
“To make up for your invisibility and memory-altering spells.”
“Which are necessary to protect ourselves from your small-minded bigotry.”
“Gentlemen,” Agent Sampson said sternly. “We have to focus here.”
Albion let out another strained sigh.
“Very well,” he said in what seemed to be a physically draining attempt to appear calm. “Have your machines revealed the identity of the thief?”
“No,” Dean Futuro said. “Unfortunately, I overestimated your ability to maintain security on an abandoned castle. My wanderwindow just reached the castle.”
“Wanderwin
dow?” Sam asked.
“A cloud of flying nanobots with cameras that I can remotely control,” Dean Futuro rattled off quickly as he tapped on his computer and the image on the screen shifted. It came to rest on a corner of the icy room. Sam wasn’t exactly sure what she was looking at, but there seemed to be a person-sized hole in the ice.
“The armor is gone.”
“Stop wasting my time,” Albion shouted. “Where is the Witch Hunter’s Gauntlet?”
Sam ran her hand through her hair. When were they going to realize that she didn’t know anything and just leave her alone?
“Miss Hathaway, Mr. McQueen, do either of you know the present location of the Witch Hunter’s Gauntlet?” Dean Futuro asked.
“Nope,” Zack said quickly. “And I would like to point out that I am a minor, and any further questions you have should wait until my parents and lawyers are present.”
“I don’t even know what it is,” Sam said. Her shoulders drooped.
Agent Sampson cleared his throat. “The Witch Hunter’s Gauntlet, also known as the Gauntlet of Gilgamesh, Brace of Hercules, Hand of Guan Yu, or simply the Hero Glove is a very-“
“Very powerful magically doohickey that you aren’t going to tell me anything about, because if I don’t have it then I don’t need to know what it can do,” Sam said with a burst of sarcastic bravery that bubbled up from somewhere deep inside.
“More lies!” Albion screamed. “We know that Joanne Hathaway used the gauntlet to destroy Prince Cervantes. You have been hiding its location ever since. I have an official proclamation from the International Sorcerers’ Guild demanding that you turn over the Witch Hunter’s Gauntlet to us immediately.”
He pulled a piece of parchment from his robes and unrolled it on Dean Futuro’s desk. Someone with amazing handwriting had painstakingly written the document in large, looping letters.
“Please remove that dirty piece of animal hide from my desk,” Dean Futuro said, twitching his nose as if the parchment smelled.
Agent Sampson delicately picked up the document and read it thoroughly.
“Believe me, Constable Albion, the BEA wants Cervantes dealt with as much as the ISG. If we had knowledge of the gauntlet’s location, we would make it available to our allies. But it was never in our possession,” Agent Sampson said in a very sincere-sounding tone.
