Willow's Perfect Storm

by D J DuMont

  Of course, nothing ever went according to plan.

  Willow knew there would be hiccups. She just hoped those hiccups didn’t prove fatal to the mission, or to any of the Agents participating in the mission. She also harbored a secret hope that her father might be hidden in one of the tunnels. Did she dare hope that they might rescue not just Alexis today, but her father, too? None of the spies had seen her father here, but that didn’t mean much. Stein kept her father under wraps as much as possible, and if Stein was here, there was a good possibility that Willow’s father was, too.

  Anjali slid off her dragon onto the snow-covered ground, and the others followed suit. As planned, they fanned out to cover the perimeter of the clearing. Anjali wanted to be sure that even if they’d misjudged the exact spot the tunnel entrance was located, and even if the entrance to the hideout closed faster than expected, at least one Agent would be close enough to get in.

  Willow stood with Kent, as they’d been assigned. He needed to stay close enough to her to remain under her invisibility spell, and she did have to admit that it was nice to have a sidekick. His magic gun might not be as good as an actual magic ring on a wizard, but it was something. She smiled encouragingly at him and he tried to smile back.

  “Are you sure there’s a hideout here?” he asked in a low voice. “It doesn’t look like anything.”

  Willow shrugged as she glanced over the clearing, which looked like merely a giant patch of snow. Kent was right. It didn’t look like anything, but that was Stein’s intention. Stein had several networks of underground tunnels, all of which had entrances that were hidden in plain sight. If you knew exactly where the door was and knew the password, you could open the entrances. Unfortunately, none of the Agents knew the password, which was why following a large delivery into the tunnels was as good a plan as any for gaining access. If their plan wasn’t successful, Stein would be spooked and move on, and the search for Alexis would start over at square one. Willow tried not to think about that possibility.

  Once everyone was in position, Anjali whispered into her radio chip to speak to the group. “Now we wait.”

  The words crackled into a small earpiece in Willow’s ear, and she breathed a sigh of relief knowing that at least her radio communication devices were working. She’d been slightly terrified of the idea of getting stuck somewhere with no way for Anjali or anyone else to contact her and give her instructions on how to get out. So far, though, everything seemed to be going as well as she could have hoped. If the Dragon Heart spies had estimated correctly, then the delivery of jetpack parts should be arriving in approximately three hours’ time. All Willow and the others had to do in the meantime was to remain calm. Willow took a deep breath and settled in for the wait.

  Thirty seconds later, her brief moment of being settled ended.

  Large cracks appeared in the snow cover in the center of the clearing in front of them, forming a large square shape. Willow stared in confusion as the snow moved. Was this the entrance? Was it opening? But why? The delivery wasn’t scheduled for several more hours. Was someone coming out, or had the Dragon Heart Agents’ cover been blown?

  As these thoughts raced through Willow’s head, a low, rumbling sound from above drew her attention. She looked up and didn’t see anything at first, but the rumbling sound grew steadily louder. A few moments later, a small army of figures riding through the air on jetpacks suddenly appeared. Each jetpack also carried a large box, and Willow’s eyes widened as she realized that this must be the delivery. But it was too early by several hours! Could it really be that the Dragon Heart Agents had barely arrived in time to catch the moment the door to Stein’s hideout opened?

  It appeared so. Willow glanced back at the clearing to see that the spot where the snow had cracked was now an opening into a tunnel. Stein’s hideout was wide open!

  “Looks like the delivery time changed,” Anjali whispered into her radio chip in a grim tone. “This might mean that Stein is expecting trouble. It also might mean that somehow the traitor at the Dragon Heart Agency learned of our mission and told Stein. Everyone proceed with caution and keep your invisibility shields strong. Otherwise, you know what to do. Good luck everyone, and let’s move!”

  Anjali started running full speed toward the hideout’s entrance. The jetpacks were almost there, and Willow feared that they were going to run straight into the invisible Dragon Heart Agents as they sped toward the tunnel. But that was a chance they would all need to take. They might never get another opportunity like this to infiltrate Stein’s hideout.

  “Come on, Kent!” Willow hissed in an excited whisper. Then she sprinted toward the tunnel without another glance back.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Willow pressed up against the tunnel wall as flatly as she could, holding her breath as the jetpacks carrying the delivery zoomed past. Beside her, Kent’s eyes were wide with the same terrified look he’d had the day he first saw Cayenne. He looked over at Willow and she gave him a stern glare. If he freaked out and ruined this mission for all of them, she would never forgive him.

  Luckily, her glare seemed to snap him out of the panic he’d been descending into. He gripped his magic gun tighter, but the expression in his eyes calmed.

  Willow herself didn’t feel calm. How could she, when she was inside the enemy’s lair, minutes away from seeing Alexis? She might even be minutes away from seeing her father. She trembled with a mixture of nerves, fear, and rage. She felt anger boiling within her, and she wanted nothing more than to pay Stein back for all he had taken from her. He’d taken years that she should have had with her father. He’d taken time she should have had with Alexis. And his threats were the reason that she and the other Dragon Heart students had spent so much time confined in that confounded safe room. She knew that many of her fellow students were terrified of the possibility of running across Stein, but not Willow. Willow would relish the opportunity to face down Stein again.

  She vowed that if she saw him, she would not let him get away. Her magic was strong, and the deep rage within her was stronger. If he crossed her path, she would make him pay with his life.

  After what felt like an eternity, but what must have only been about twenty seconds, all of the jetpacks carrying supplies for Stein had zoomed past Willow and the others. The entrance to the tunnel slammed shut, and Willow shuddered as several large, steel bars automatically slid in place behind the door.

  Anjali had warned the students that getting the door to open from the inside probably wouldn’t be any easier than getting it to open from the outside. Escaping would likely require casting a spell on the door to break it open, but that would be easy enough to do. The problem was that breaking the door would undoubtedly set off alarms all over the hideout, sending Stein and his cronies into a mad rush to chase down whoever was responsible for the alarms. The alarms weren’t as big of a deal on the way out as they would have been on the way in, however. Once Willow and the others left the hideout, they’d be jumping on their waiting dragons and riding like mad to get away from here—hopefully with Alexis in tow.

  And hopefully with my father in tow, Willow thought. Anjali had warned her that expecting her father to be there was only setting herself up for a disappointment, but Willow didn’t listen. The Dragon Heart spies believed Stein was here, and Willow was convinced that Stein wouldn’t stray too far away from wherever her father was. After all, Stein needed a continuous source of magic if he wanted to keep replenishing his own magic guns, and Willow’s father was his only source of magic.

  Now that the jetpacks had all flown by, Anjali stepped into the middle of the long tunnel. The only light came from several old-fashioned lanterns lining the walls, and the light didn’t shine very brightly. Nevertheless, Willow could see her professor well enough as the woman raised a hand and pointed in the direction the jetpacks had flown.

  “You all know the plan. Now that we’re in, we’ll spread out and start searching this labyrinth of tunnels. Keep your invisibility s
hields up as long as possible, but you can switch to using an easier, comprehensive invisibility shield at this point. We’ll all be so spread out soon that it won’t matter whether or not we can see each other. Except, of course, Willow and Sylvie. Since you’re working with Kent and Marcus, and they need to see you, keep using selective invisibility shields.”

  Willow stifled back a groan. Up until now, the wizards had all been using selective invisibility shields, which allowed the wizard casting the spell to pick and choose whom they were invisible to or not. This meant that their fellow wizards could still see them, but Stein or any of his guards could not. The problem with selective invisibility shields was that they took far more magical energy than a comprehensive invisibility shield, which simply made the spellcaster invisible to anyone. Willow would have loved to have switched to a comprehensive shield at this point, so she could focus all of her energy on attacking Stein when she found him, but that wasn’t going to be an option. She was stuck with a non-wizard, so she was stuck with the selective shield.

  Willow glanced over to her left, and saw Locke a split-second before he disappeared under a comprehensive invisibility spell. A fresh wave of rage went through her as she realized that Locke had an unfair advantage on her.

  He’s probably going to find and kill Stein first, just because he doesn’t have to focus so much on his invisibility shield. But then he’s going to claim that he beat me to Stein because he’s a better wizard than me. He won’t admit it had anything to do with having the advantage of a comprehensive invisibility shield.

  “Hey, are you alright?” Kent asked, in a voice that was barely more than a whisper. “You look like you’re about to murder someone.”

  Willow could feel the heat in her cheeks, and she knew they must be red with rage. She had to stop wasting time worrying about what Locke was doing and focus on finding Alexis. She turned to Kent and narrowed her eyes into a determined expression.

  “The only person I’m going to murder is Stein. Let’s move.”

  Willow took off at a run down the long tunnel, and Kent had to scramble to keep up with her. She saw Sylvie and Marcus dart down one of the first long tunnels that branched off the main tunnel, and Willow had a feeling that the rest of her group was probably doing the same, even though she couldn’t actually see them doing it.

  But she kept running. She wasn’t sure what she was looking for, but she had a gut feeling that Alexis wasn’t going to be anywhere close to that main entrance. If Willow wanted to find anyone whom Stein was holding captive, she would have to venture deep into this lair. Things were only going to get more dangerous the deeper in she went, but she didn’t care. She wasn’t afraid of the danger, at least not enough to scare her into turning back. She wasn’t here to worry about her own life. She was here to worry about saving Alexis, saving her father, and destroying Stein.

  Willow glanced over her shoulder to make sure that Kent was still with her. To her relief, he was keeping pace with her quite well. She should have expected that. His athletic build suggested that he spent a great deal of time at the gym, and Willow vaguely remembered him doing a wild assortment of exercises every day, even when they had been holed up in the safe house. She hadn’t paid that much attention, because she’d been trying to avoid everyone else as much as possible. But she had heard him brag to Marcus that he had a “hotel workout” down that could be done anywhere with enough space to do a pushup.

  Willow was thankful now that Kent had kept himself in shape. She didn’t want to be dragging dead weight around, but he was keeping up with her and even seemed to have calmed down after his initial brush with panic. Willow slowed slightly and took a few deep breaths to calm her own nerves. Maybe getting stuck escorting one of the non-wizards around wasn’t all that bad, after all. Even though Kent couldn’t cast spells the way she could, he could do quite a lot to defend her using that giant magic gun he was toting around. And it did feel nice not to be completely alone in this.

  “Where are we heading?” Kent asked in a low voice as Willow slowed even more. “Are you sure you’re going to know how to retrace our steps and get out of here?”

  Willow came to a complete stop and looked over at Kent, raising her eyebrow in surprise. “Didn’t they tell you? We all cast tracing spells back in the clearing where the dragons are waiting. When we’re ready to go back, we just follow the magic back. Our magic rings will guide us.”

  Kent shook his head in amazement. “Well, that’s handy. I wish I could do tricks like that.”

  Willow smiled at him. There was so much she could have said in response to that. She could have told him that he should be careful what he wished for, because the responsibility of wielding magic all the time was a heavy one. She could have told him that she would never have a truly normal life, because she would have to hide the magic side of herself from anyone who wasn’t part of the Dragon Heart Agency. Or she could have even tried to downplay how handy magic tricks were, just to make him feel better. But she didn’t do any of those things. Instead, she said, “I guess in some ways, I’m lucky. And anyway, the best part about the tracing spell is that my magic ring will essentially store a map of everywhere I’ve been. That means that when we get back to the Dragon Heart campus, I can use a special spell that will automatically recreate that map on paper. Once we combine the maps from everyone on this mission, we’ll have a pretty good estimate of what Stein’s hideout looks like.”

  Kent frowned, and Willow couldn’t help but notice how adorable he was when he looked perplexed. She still hadn’t forgiven him for abandoning her to what he thought was a deadly dragon the day he met Cayenne, but she was at least feeling less antagonistic toward him. Right now, he looked genuinely confused as he spoke.

  “But won’t Stein abandon this hideout once he realizes we infiltrated it?”

  Willow shrugged. “Probably. But knowing how one of his hideouts is laid out might give us some clues as to what the others look like. I doubt he mixes it up that much between locations.”

  Kent nodded slowly. “True. Alright then, where do we go now?”

  Willow looked around her, trying to decide. The tunnel was still dark, and relatively bare. She’d expected more guards, or at least some alarms that would sound off when intruders raced through the tunnels. Either this portion of the hideout was relatively abandoned, or she was just missing some sort of silent alarms going off. She had no way of truly knowing which scenario was likelier. All she could do was to keep moving forward until she came across something interesting.

  “Forward, I think,” she said to Kent. “The others all explored the tunnels at the entrance. We should see what’s further on.”

  Kent didn’t argue, and they walked on in silence for several more minutes. Willow was beginning to think that they should turn around, when suddenly the tunnel turned a corner and opened into a large, circular room that appeared to be some sort of central courtyard.

  Bingo, she thought. Several doors dotted the walls of the circular room, all guarded by men dressed in the dark suits that Stein’s Dark Sparks always wore. The guards looked bored, like they weren’t truly expecting any sort of intruders to come through. In the center of the courtyard area, a chess table was set up and a pair of guards was playing, while several other guards looked on. Willow knew she must have reached the entrance to the main part of the hideout, but she wasn’t sure exactly what to do now. There were too many guards for her to take them all down quietly. One or more of them would be able to sound off an alarm before she could silence everyone, and that would no doubt bring hordes of guards down on Willow and Kent. The mission would be over before she had a chance to look for her father and Alexis.

  But then, Willow had an idea that just might work. Quietly, she pushed Kent back around the corner and into the hallway they’d come from.

  “I need to cast a tranquilizing spell, and you need to be out of the way when I do it, or you’re going to get tranquilized, too.”

  Kent raised an eyebrow. �
�A tranquilizing spell?”

  “Yes. It’ll knock them out for a good half-hour, at least. It’s a bit difficult to do on this many people at once, but it’s quiet and stealthy. Hopefully, I’m good enough to manage it. It’s a lot easier than a mass suffocation spell, which I’d prefer. That would knock them all out permanently, but I don’t think I can handle that many suffocation spells at once.”

  Kent looked slightly doubtful, but only nodded his head. “Alright. So I should just wait here?”

  “Yes, don’t come around the corner until I tell you, or you’ll get knocked out, too.”

  Kent nodded again, and took a few more steps backward into the hallway, just for good measure.

  Willow smiled confidently at him, and then switched her invisibility shield to the easier, comprehensive shield. Kent didn’t need to see her at that moment, and she needed to preserve as much magical energy as possible for the tranquilizing spell. She’d tried to act confident, but the truth was that she wasn’t entirely sure this would work. She’d learned about tranquilizing spells in her advanced medical magic class, but she’d never actually performed one, let alone tried to perform it on an entire room of people at once. If she screwed this up, her cover was blown, as was the cover of the entire group of Dragon Heart Agents currently wandering through this hideout.

  Willow couldn’t think of any better ways to handle the guards, though, so she stepped back into the circular area and raised her magic ring. She decided to attempt the spell through mental magic, which was a bit trickier but would result in a stronger spell. That would make it easier for her to knock out so many guards at once, and it would allow her to cast the spell without making any noise. With any luck, the guards would all pass out before even realizing that anyone was in the room with them.