by Bret Schulte
“So why didn’t you just sell them?” Lucas asked snidely. “You would have been rich.”
Doc Frost smiled a kind and patient smile.
“That was exactly my first thought too,” he said. “But my supervising professor, Dr. Heinrich Markham, stole all the credit for my work. He was going to sell my designs for millions and completely cut me out. I didn’t take it well.
“I destroyed every copy of my designs and took the two working prototypes. The school reported them stolen and suddenly I was a criminal. I went into hiding, cut off from my wife and baby daughter. All I had were my ray guns, which I couldn’t even sell. I was desperate, and I had read a lot of comic books in my youth, so I put together a costume and robbed a bank.”
Sam could see the pain in his eyes. Doc Frost was reliving what had to be the worst moments in his life. She wanted to tell him he could stop, but she knew how important it was to just let someone vent.
“The FBI arrested me two days later. The BEA covered up the entire event. It turns out a Cold War was brewing between the magical community and the scientific world and the last thing anyone needed was a madman in a flashy costume running around in public.”
“Magical community?” Lucas asked in a small voice.
“You know, witches, wizards, the whole deal.”
“So are we talking Lord of the Rings-style wizards, Harry Potter-style wizards, Dungeon and Dragons-style wizards, or what?” Lucas asked.
“Real-life wizards,” Tasha said condescendingly.
Lucas crinkled his nose at her before turning to Doc Frost. “And they are at war with us?”
“Not exactly. And not with you,” Doc Frost said in a reassuring voice. “For thousands of years homo sapiens and homo magi, regular people and magical people, have coexisted on this planet. But we have not always gotten along. They played tricks on us, we threw rocks at them, but for the most part the two societies lived together peacefully. Every now and then something would spark a fight between the two groups, and for the most part the magic people had the most power, but the normal people outnumbered them.
“Eventually the magical society went into hiding and the rest of the world forgot that magic was ever real, so everyone was happy. Until the Renaissance. With the dawn of modern science, we were finally catching up with them. A rogue band of wizards decided to stop our progress and a group of early scientists decided to fight back. When the dust settled, the good wizards and the good scientists made peace and agreed to maintain order while keeping everything secret from the rest of the world.”
“And you’re one of the good scientists maintaining order?” Sam asked.
Doc Frost pointed at Sam as if she had made a comment that reminded him of something. He got out of his chair and rummaged through his bookcase.
“The BEA offered me a choice. Fifty years in prison, or go to work for them.”
“And what is the BEA?” Lucas asked. The freeze ray hung at his side, all but forgotten.
“The Bureau of Extraordinary Affairs,” Tasha said brusquely. “A secret branch of the League of Nations established in 1920 by a small group of adventurers and inventors to protect humanity from the dangers of the extreme fringes of science and the supernatural. Keep up.”
Lucas huffed and rolled his eyes.
Doc Frost produced a photo album from the bookcase. He flipped it open and handed it to Sam.
Sam studied the photo at the top of the page very carefully. Four men in their mid-twenties with wide, toothy smiles stood posed on the deck of boat. They looked like college buddies on a fishing trip. Sam recognized one of them as a younger Doc Frost and another as her grandfather.
Sam tilted the album so Zoey and Tasha could see the photo. “That’s my grandfather, Samuel Hathaway, Sr.”
Doc Frost pointed to the man standing behind her grandfather. “And that’s Simon McQueen, your other grandfather. This is quite possibly the only photo of Samuel and Simon where they are both actually smiling instead of trying to kill each other.”
Sam studied Simon’s face. She had only heard his name mentioned once, and not fondly. He was tall and dark and broody. If they had been a boy band he would have been the bad boy of the group.
“What about this other guy?” Sam asked.
“That’s Julius Nero. Alexander’s father,” Doc Frost said, as if that was supposed to mean something to her.
Julius Nero seemed to be the nerd of the group. He was short and skinny and had the thickest glasses she had ever seen on someone under fifty.
Wait a minute. Nero? Dean Futuro had mentioned the name Nero.
“Who is Julius Nero? And who’s Alexander?”
Doc Frost tilted back in his chair and tapped his forehead with his fingertips. “Of course! You probably never met Alexander Nero. He and your father used to be the best of friends. We all thought they were going to be the next generation. Carry on our work. But over time they grew apart. Your father was more the adventurer type and Alexander turned his attentions to business. He built a very successful pharmaceuticals corporation from his father’s genetics research.”
Sam hadn’t met many of her parents’ friends. She would have liked to have talked to him. He probably knew all sorts of crazy stories about her father that Harold and Helen didn’t know. But Dean Futuro said that Alexander Nero was dead. That seemed to be a recurring theme in Sam’s life.
“Anyway, it was a real honor to work for your grandfather,” Doc Frost said earnestly. “Even though we never did get the tesseract technology to work properly.”
“Tesseracts? Really?” Zoey perked up. She was as excited as Sam would have been if Doc Frost had said that Sara Berlin was coming to town. “How close did you get?”
“Impossible to say. But we managed to keep the universe from imploding, so that’s a good thing.”
“Uh, for the geek speak-impaired, what is a tesseract?” Tasha asked.
Zoey bounced up and down on the couch, so Doc Frost gestured for her to explain. “It’s a pocket in space and time. Imagine a box where the inside is larger than the outside, except there is no box. You could put the entire contents of your closet inside this pocket and then close it down to the size of a grain of sand and carry it around with you.”
“Awesome,” Lucas said.
“Awesome indeed,” Doc Frost said with a nod of his head. “But we could never find the right energy matrix to keep it from exploding. We blew up large chunks of the BEA’s secret research and development island working on Samuel’s project.”
“It is so cool that you worked with my grandfather.” Sam had so many questions for Doc Frost she didn’t know where to start.
“He was a great and brilliant man. It was a shame we never got it to work. ‘Hathaway’s Folly’ it was called. He took it hard. Practically gave up science all together.” Doc Frost shrugged. “Of course, he did switch to archaeology in his later years, but if he hadn’t then he never would have found the Lantern of the Blue Flame.”
“The what of the what?” Lucas asked.
“Mystical lantern, lit by a dragon, brings people back to life,” Sam said. It was nice to have an answer for once.
“Unfortunately,” Tasha said heavily. “Someone stole the lantern and resurrected Prince Cervantes.”
“Who is?” Lucas asked in great annoyance.
“A very powerful wizard turned vampire that was destroyed by Sam’s mother and has now returned.”
Lucas snapped his fingers. “And he is the one who sent the vampire cheerleaders after us.”
“Most likely.”
“And you’re some sort of vampire hunter?” Lucas asked.
“Monster hunter.” Tasha corrected with pride.
“So you’re going to dust this Cervantes guy like you did the cheerleaders.”
“No,” Tasha said sharply.
“But isn’t that what you do?” Lucas asked. “We could help.”
“This isn’t a movie,” Tasha said harshly. “I’m sure you think
vampire hunting is all sorts of fun. We’ll just go charging in with wooden stakes and holy water and take him out.”
“You didn’t seem to have much difficulty with the pep squad,” he said defensively.
“First of all, I’ve trained for this my whole life.” She crossed her arms and stared him down. “Second of all, Cervantes is not a normal vampire. He is a vampire prince.”
The room was silent for a few seconds.
“Yeah, uh, we don’t know the difference,” Zoey said.
Tasha smiled. But it was a small tense smile. “Okay. Vampire 101. In order to become a vampire you have to be bitten by a vampire. But Cervantes didn’t do that. He was a very powerful wizard and was not willing to give up his powers.”
She noticed that everyone was staring at her in confusion. “Right, important point, magic comes from a person’s life force, so magical people lose their powers when they become vampires. The only way to get them back is to bite another magical person, but the magic wears off quickly. That’s why magical children are taught by age six to conjure a ball of sunlight.”
“Wait, go back. How did Cervantes become a vampire if he wasn’t bitten by one?” Zoey asked while nervously chewing on her own hair.
Tasha bit her lower lip and stared at the floor.
“We don’t know for sure. He is only the third person to actually pull it off. We’re pretty sure it involves selling one’s own soul.”
“Who were the other two?” Lucas asked with squinty, interrogating eyes.
“The original vampire, whoever he or she was.” Her voice dropped to a rushed whisper. “And Vlad the Impaler.”
Judging from Lucas’s sudden gasp and overall shocked and excited expression, he somehow knew this Vlad guy.
“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. It 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 mechanical 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. That’s very helpful,” Zoey, Tasha, and Sam said in unison.
Sadly, no one else had any brilliant insights into the rest of the clues. 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.
