by Bret Schulte
“Gorgeous, isn’t it? Those old mystics really knew how to craft a weapon, didn’t they?”
Nero held the gauntlet up like a trophy, turning it slowly.
Every gemstone on the gauntlet was glowing now, spitting out little sparks of reds, and blues, and yellows, and greens that somehow melted together to form a brilliant purple light that flowed around the gauntlet as if it were a liquid, occasionally crackling with violet lightning.
“Still a little frozen.”
He fired a quick burst from the heat ray into the gauntlet before tossing the ray gun aside. He poured out the water before slipping the gauntlet on over his right hand. It was like the whole room was suddenly alive with static electricity; Sam could feel the gauntlet’s raw power tickling the exposed skin on her arms and face.
Sam watched as the purple light flowed across his skin until it had completely cocooned Nero. No one made a sound.
In a flash the cocoon dissolved into a million little sparks. Nero stood amongst them, smiling, in a dark purple suit of armor with big unnecessary shoulder spikes, a long flowing purple cape, and an N-shaped serpent on the chest plate. And, of course, it glowed faintly, as if it wasn’t already amazing enough.
“So cool,” Nero said, admiring his new armor.
Bolts of electricity crackled between the spikes of his armor.
“Impressive,” a voice boomed from the ceiling. “I suppose I should be flattered.”
Cervantes gently floated down next to Nero, making the similarities between his armor and Nero’s armor all the more noticeable.
“Ah, Cervantes, I was beginning to worry that Tasha had turned you into a cloud of dust. I believe you have something for me.”
Cervantes dropped a computer chip into Nero’s waiting hand.
“This is part of a cell phone,” Nero said before crushing the chip in his hand.
“They must have swapped it as a last act of defiance,” Cervantes said without a trace of concern on his handsome face.
Still, those words hit Sam like a hail of knives.
“What did you do to them?” she asked, slowly rising to her feet.
A thin smile spread across his face. With a snap of his fingers, two green sparks fluttered down from the roof until they hung in the air beside him. With a flash, the sparks turned into Lucas and Tasha.
They instantly crumpled to the floor, unmoving, their eyes closed.
From where she stood Sam couldn’t tell if they were breathing, or if they had been… bitten.
“You monster!” Doc Frost yelled from his cage. Tears rolled down his face. “Nero! This is what you are prepared to unleash on the world? This thing! They were children! You soulless monster!”
Sam felt tears running down her face too. If the worst had happened, well, she couldn’t let herself believe it.
“Shall I silence him?” Cervantes asked, his right hand already raised and glowing red.
“I need him alive-“
“I’ll never help you,” Doc Frost spat. “I’ll-“
“Oh, don’t worry about it,” Nero said dismissively. “As soon as I master the necessary spell I’ll erase all of your nasty little memories of this ever happening. You’ll be more than willing to help me then. Until then I suggest you just calm down; there’s no sense in getting all worked up about something you won’t ever remember.”
Doc Frost lunged at the bars of his cage. The bars crackled as they burned into his clothes and skin, but it didn’t stop him. The red energy bars were beginning to bend.
Nero sighed. “I had hoped we could deal with this as adults. Have it your way. You can be my first experiment.”
Two blue bands of magic flew out of the gauntlet. One wrapped around Doc Frost’s body like a straightjacket while the other wrapped around his mouth, gagging him.
Doc Frost fell backwards. Zoey rushed to his side.
“See, that wasn’t so hard,” Nero said to Cervantes. “You were a better teacher than I thought. Congratulations. With my superior mind and your tutelage I will master every spell you know by the end of the week.”
“You are too kind,” Cervantes said, clearly not meaning a single word.
“Now then, there are still hundreds of spells to try. Let’s start with something easy.” Nero waved his right hand, and a few dozen rose petals appeared and gently floated to the ground.
“Not bad. Let’s try something a little bigger.”
He raised his left hand, and dark fluffy storm clouds poured out, filling the ceiling. Thunder rolled inside the building, and a warm rain began to fall.
A drop of rain hit Sam right in the eye, shocking her back to her senses. She scanned the room. Everyone else was just as enthralled with Nero’s new abilities as she had been. Even Nero’s bodyguard was staring in total awe at his boss, completely ignoring Sam--which seemed fair to her, since she was now exactly zero threat, with no weapon, no skills, and no idea what to do.
She figured that at this very moment there had to be literally a billion people on the planet that would be more useful in this situation than her. She really wished a few of those people would show up.
No one came.
Maybe the world was used to having Hathaways save it. Too bad it got the wrong Hathaway this time.
Then she remembered the sack of freaky super weapons just a few rows away.
“Fine,” she mumbled to the rest of the world.
It was time to do something stupid.
Chapter 24
Something Stupid
Sam didn’t know anything about magic, but she had seen enough movies to know that the only thing stupider than saying “at least it can’t get any worse” was standing around while the bad guy reached full power.
Slowly she sidestepped her way to where the bag of weapons sat.
“Abracadabra.”
Nero barely twitched his finger and a row of slot machines tore free from the floor and hovered in the air.
“Presto chango.”
The slot machines twisted and folded like some giant demented origami, the metal screeching as it rubbed together and tore apart, coins jingling as they sloshed around inside the tangled mess. In seconds, the dozen or so slot machines transformed into a long flying dragon with razor-sharp claws, a line of levers running down its back like spikes, and eyes that constantly kept spinning through images of cherries and lemons and sevens. The metal dragon wagged its tail and looked up at Nero like a loyal dog. It even smiled, if such a thing is possible, revealing long metal teeth while happily chirping and dinging away as if someone had just hit the Mega Million Dollar Jackpot.
“Transfiguration,” Cervantes said, gesturing to the dragon. “It takes the average wizard years to master such a feat, but animation, that is a master-level spell. You may actually be as powerful as you claimed.”
“Restoration is also a master-level spell,” Cervantes said rising an inch into the air like a happy cartoon character. “We must perform the ceremony immediately.”
Nero clearly did not share his enthusiasm. As Sam crept closer to the bag, she watched his face closely in case he spotted her, but he was clearly far more interested in his newly created dragon than anything she did or Cervantes said.
Cervantes’s eyes narrowed, and his lip curled slightly to reveal a fang beneath.
“Master Nero,” he said tersely. “I trust you remember our deal.”
“Not now, Cervantes.” Nero said offhandedly as if he were addressing an annoying child.
Cervantes floated closer to Nero. “I ask for but this one favor in exchange for an eternity of service.”
“First of all, you really have no choice.” Nero gestured to the Lantern of the Blue Flame sitting on a slot machine stool three rows away. “And secondly, right now I’m more interested in what exactly Miss Hathaway thinks she’s doing.”
A ball of green and purple smoke crashed into the floor between Sam and the bag of weapons, spreading across the four feet of marble tile separating them. The floo
r beneath the smoke bubbled and hissed. Sam stopped dead in her tracks, a mere inch from the vile swirling mess.
“Run, Sam!” Zoey screamed, but Sam was too terrified to process the words.
All she could think about was the triumphant smile on Nero’s face. She could see a world war reflected in the lenses of his goggles, millions of people turned to zombie slaves because she was too afraid to do something about it.
She leapt through the writhing smoke.
The right leg of her cheap cotton pirate pants instantly turned black as it came down inside the smoke. She could feel her left leg burn and bubble. Her momentum carried her through the swirling fumes; but, unfortunately, she instinctively bent down to grab her leg. She tumbled forward, landing on the bag. Some sort of dart burst out of the bag an inch from her left arm; she figured she must have landed on a trigger.
Sam grabbed the two frayed ends of the newly rotted hole in her pant leg and pulled, extending the tear up to her knee. A four-inch long green-and-purple blister oozed down her leg. She knew nothing about burns or bruises, and absolutely nothing about magical injuries, but it was numb for now. It was going to hurt like crazy soon, she was sure of that, assuming she lived long enough.
She heard a distant playful voice shout, “Sic her.”
Ding. Ding. Ding.
The slot-machine dragon cocked its head and stared at Sam with triple cherries in its eyes. It raised its tail and opened its mouth like an angry cat… or a dragon about to spit fire.
A hail of coins flew out of the dragon’s mouth so fast that they embedded themselves into the slot machines next to Sam, and the dragon was swiveling its head toward her. In another second she was going to be shredded by tokens. Sam sprang to her feet, seized the bag with both hands, and ran as fast as she could down the row of slot machines.
Behind her she could hear that the hail of coins had been replaced by the fierce rhythmic scratching of the dragon’s metal claws on the marble floor. It was like a dog running across linoleum, only a thousand times worse. It was also getting closer.
She heard the whizzing sound of flying coins just before something sliced across her left forearm just above the wrist.
The instant Sam reached the end of the row, she dropped to the ground and crawled over to the next row. She reached into the bag and pulled out the first thing she found that felt like a gun. It was heavy in her hand and looked very death-raylike to her.
As she waited for the dragon to stop spewing coins, Sam checked her cut. A thin line of blood was slowly trickling down her arm. Just as she thought to apply pressure to the cut, her protective wall of slot machines stopped shaking. The dragon either ran out of coins or was planning something worse.
Sam popped up, took aim at the dragon, and fired.
A four-pronged grappling hook shot out of the gun and hooked onto the metal beast’s head. The dragon reared up and pulled the gun out of her hands.
“Stupid Curse,” Sam yelled as she ducked back down just in time to miss the next volley of coins. Sam always knew that the Sam Curse loved making her look stupid in public, but she never thought it was actually trying to get her killed.
“You know, if I die you die too,” she said to the Curse. “Let’s work together here.”
Sam dug through the bag for something that looked like a laser gun or a disintegration ray or a metal-dragon melting beam. The pounding sound of coins on metal grew louder and louder, and the slot machine against her back was shaking more and more. Sam slid to the side just in time. The slot machine she had been hiding behind exploded, spraying coins and twisted bits of machinery everywhere.
Without missing a beat, the dragon started pelting her new hiding place. There were only ten more slot machines in this row; she couldn’t hide forever. She didn’t have time to try every gun in the bag.
A plan formed.
She dug through the bag until she found a gun she recognized, the crazy wind-generating gun. Sam started cranking the gun like mad. In no time it was producing so much wind she could barely hang onto it anymore; it was like trying to hold a hurricane. Next to her sat a pile of coins in the wreckage of the destroyed slot machine.
“Please don’t let this be stupid.”
In one slick move Sam rolled out from behind her hiding place, landing behind the pile of coins. The dragon opened its jaws and lunged at her. Sam tilted the wind gun up, blasting the pile of coins into the creature’s face. One lucky coin went right through the dragon’s left eye.
With a sad, painful screech of metal on metal, the dragon slumped to the floor. Its other two eyes stopped spinning. Sam was pretty sure it was dead, or broken, or whatever.
“This is so insane,” she whispered to herself.
“So is talking to yourself.”
Sam rolled over to see Nero floating above her. Before she could whip the wind gun around, he waved his right hand. The gun flew across the room, shattering against a stone pillar. With his left hand he conjured up a shimmering blue chain that wrapped around Sam, pinning her to the floor.
“You broke my dragon.”
“He deserved it,” Sam said, staring at the crackling ball of blue and black flame swirling around in Nero’s gauntleted palm.
“I’m impressed, truly,” Nero said, extinguishing the flame in his hand. “First I was just going to let you leave, then I thought I might turn you to stone, but now that you have proven yourself to be a spunky little fighter, I’m going to erase your memory and have Cervantes turn you into one of my vampire minions. Personally, I wouldn’t want to be stuck at fourteen forever; but then, I hear that vampires are really popular with teenagers these days, so I’m sure you’ll be fine.”
A white spark appeared at the end of his right index finger. A beautiful tiny point of light that was going to eliminate everything that Sam was or could ever be in less than a second.
Sam struggled against her magical bonds, but it was useless. She wanted to say something witty and defiant, but instead she found herself desperately trying to recall her favorite memories before they were erased forever. Jumbled images of her eighth birthday party when her parents took her to New York City to see the Empire State Building, Tasha threatening to beat up Zack, making homemade pizza with Helen, and Lucas asking her to the Masquerade Ball floated through her brain.
It was such a disorienting sensation that she failed to realize for several seconds that Nero hadn’t zapped her brain yet. In fact, he wasn’t moving at all. He just floated there pointing at her with a menacing sneer frozen on his face. He wasn’t even breathing; he could have been a wax statue of himself.
“Move it, people, nine minutes and counting,” a stern voice bellowed. “Clear these civilians-“
“Containment is the priority,” a second, even sterner voice yelled. “Restraining and siphoning teams, assemble. Use of lethal spells has been approved.”
Sam tried to turn her neck to see who was speaking, but the magical chains around her only tightened more.
An army’s worth of footsteps stomped all around Sam. There were so many sounds; yelling, running, the humming of machinery. Sam couldn’t make out what was going on. A shimmering blue crystal cage grew around Nero, leaving only his gauntleted right hand exposed.
Finally someone leaned over her. It was Deputy Colver. She hadn’t seen him since that day at the mall, but she wasn’t likely to ever forget the face of a wizard who tried to arrest her.
“Let’s get you out of that chain,” he said, waving his hands over the blue chain. He closed his eyes and winced as if he was in great pain, but the chain dissolved into little shapeless globs of light that winked out of existence.
A hand appeared to help her up.
“Great job, kid,” Agent Sampson said, pulling Sam to her feet. “We’ll take it from here.”
Sam finally had a chance to survey the chaotic scene around her. It was easy to tell the wizards and witches from the ISG apart from the agents from the BEA because one group wore long multi-colored robes a
nd the other wore simple black suits. Both groups were scrambling around Nero and Cervantes. Half a dozen wizards were casting the blue crystal prisons around them. Two balls of sunlight orbited Cervantes’ prison. The remaining wizards and witches were positioning themselves around the prisons, either casting protective spells or preparing to attack. Three elderly wizards were huddled around Nero’s exposed hand either examining or trying to pry off the gauntlet; Sam couldn’t quite tell. But she did recognize Constable Albion shouting orders while checking his time-stopping watch.
For their part the BEA agents were also positioning themselves, weapons drawn, around the frozen duo. A few were even setting up huge fancy ray guns on tripods.
Something red exploded on the edge of Sam’s vision. Instinctively she clung to Agent Sampson’s arm.
He patted her hands gently.
“It’s all right,” he said, pointing at the scene of the explosion.
Two ISG witches had cracked open the flaming red cage and freed Zoey and Doc Frost. As she watched the witches dissolve the magical bindings around Doc Frost, Sam realized she didn’t know what happened to the rest of her friends.
“Where’s-“
“We’ve already evacuated the others,” he said answering her unfinished question. But that didn’t tell her what she really wanted to know. She needed to know if Tasha and Lucas were going to be okay.
“And now you have to go too,” he said, gesturing to the gold-and-glass exit doors. “You’ve done amazingly well but we’ve got less than six minutes to-“
He was cut off by the sound of laughter.
“Suckers!” Nero yelled. He either broke free of the time stop spell or had been pretending the whole time.
The crystal prison around him shattered. Pieces flew everywhere. A large piece of cracked blue crystal whizzed over her head.
“Are you all right?” Agent Sampson asked.
Sam nodded.
“Good,” he said briskly. “Now get out of here.”
He drew his weapon, the same ray gun he had had in Dean Futuro’s office, and ran back toward the center of the casino.
