by Bret Schulte
“The BEA covered up the whole thing by telling people it was all a part of Sara Berlin’s stage show,” Natch explained. “Apparently weirder things have happened in Vegas.”
It was terrifying to watch. At the time Lucas hadn’t really realized just how close he had come to being caught. But seeing it now, he was surprised he was alive.
Instinctively his hand reached for his forehead. There was a small bandage taped over the spot where he had felt the little spark of magic enter his head--the spark that should have killed him.
“Oh, yeah, you’re welcome for that, by the way,” Natch said. “Free of charge.”
“Huh?”
“I saved your life, genius. Well, technically Esteban did, but it was my idea.” Natch got up and opened the room’s tiny closet. “You remember the wanderwindow I used to watch you? It is actually made up of thousands of tiny little flying cameras. We clustered a bunch of them on your forehead right where the spark was going to go. They absorbed most of the magic or whatever, but they did leave a nasty scar. By the way, you’ll probably want to get dressed before the nurse gets back.”
Natch tossed him a set of clothes someone must have taken from his room. Lucas realized, to his embarrassment, that he was only wearing a hospital gown under his blankets. He quickly scooped up the clothes.
“What about Tasha?” Lucas asked, reaching for his pants.
“She’ll have a scar too. You’ll be like twins.” Natch turned around and covered his eyes. “Now hurry up and get dressed.”
“So where are we?” Lucas asked as he crawled out of bed and started getting dressed.
“The Student Health Center, like I said. Since I was pretty much the only person involved smart enough to not get hurt, I got the fun job of sitting here waiting for you to wake up.”
“Sorry about that,” Lucas said, tugging on a sock.
“Whatever,” Natch said. “By the way, your ex-date, Tiffany, was seen making out with some TV star in Paris last night. So I think you two might be officially over.”
“Pfft! You know, with everything going on I had completely forgotten about her.”
“And after all the work I did to get you two crazy kids together,” Natch said with fake indignation.
“What are you talking about?” Lucas pulled his shirt down over his head.
“It was pretty clear that you were going to need help with the whole Sam thing, so while I was busy infiltrating the A crowd-”
“Infiltrating?” Lucas asked.
“Yeah,” Natch said, looking at Lucas like he was a sad, naïve child. “This might not be normal high school, but it is still a high school, and high school is war. If I’m going to be stuck with these people for the next four years I want to know everything about them; their strengths, their weaknesses, their secrets. So I spent the last several weeks getting to know the enemy.”
“But wouldn’t they have learned your secrets and weaknesses?” Lucas asked.
“My secrets are fake and I have no weaknesses,” Natch said with a shrug and a smile. “Besides, they were far more interested in your secrets and Sam’s secrets. It was the only way I was able to earn their trust. Tiffany really doesn’t like me. Fortunately, Tiffany hates Sam more, so after my little documentary at the football game when Tiffany tried to have me thrown out of the group, I offered to prove my loyalty by destroying Sam. I told her that you were Sam’s best friend or maybe a little more and it would completely devastate Sam if Tiffany asked you to the dance first. She jumped at the idea. Then I made sure she would find you at the exact time and place Sick and Wrong were going to be filming.”
Lucas could not believe what he was hearing. Honestly, who thought like that?
“Why would you do that?”
“To help you, duh,” Natch said, opening the door. “It was a win-win situation. If you said yes, you would be world-famous as the guy Tiffany Summers asked out, which would make Sam pretty jealous. If you said no, you would have been even more famous as the guy who turned Tiffany Summers down, and you would have scored major points with Sam by choosing to support your friend rather than go out with her enemy even though she is beautiful and famous.”
“Or she could stand me up and fly off to Paris,” Lucas added.
Natch rubbed his chin. “Yeah, that was a shocker. Who knew she was that smart? Still, it bought you sympathy points didn’t it?”
“You could have told me this plan,” Lucas said, slipping on his last shoe.
“This is true,” Natch said. “But I didn’t trust your acting ability, so it was better to let you make the choice yourself. You chose poorly, by the way.”
“I know.” Lucas didn’t want to think about that, though. “Did you ever figure out why she hates Sam so much?”
Natch waved the question away. “Ah, Princess Tiffany doesn’t like anyone who doesn’t immediately grovel at her feet. Plus Zack is always filling her head with stories. He has her convinced that Sam runs one of the many Tiffany Summers Sucks websites. The more he can keep her insecure and angry, the easier it is for him to control their clique.”
Sadly that sort of made sense to Lucas.
Not that Lucas was any better. Hadn’t he agreed to go to the dance with Tiffany to make Sam jealous, angry, and as sad as he was after she said no to him? Was that any way to treat a friend?
He wouldn’t blame her if she never spoke to him again.
“Okay, happy face on, we’ve got to see the others. The BEA guys want to debrief us before they let us go.”
Lucas followed Natch out the door.
“Look who’s alive,” Natch announced as they stepped into the hallway.
A nurse rushed to Lucas’s side, checking him over. She shot Natch an angry look. “I told you to alert me the minute he woke up.”
“I’m fine,” Lucas said politely, trying to keep her away. He didn’t particularly feel like being poked and prodded right now.
“He’s fine,” Natch said with a shrug.
“Then he won’t mind answering a few questions,” a stern-looking man in a black suit said, clasping Lucas by the shoulder and ushering him into another room.
It turned out to be a doctor’s office, which made Lucas even more uncomfortable. A young man in a long brown robe stood behind the desk. Before today Lucas would have pegged him as one of those weird role-playing guys, but now he knew there was a good chance he was an actual wizard.
“Sit,” the man in the suit commanded as he sat down behind the desk.
Lucas sat down.
“I am Agent Sampson with the Bureau of Extraordinary Affairs,” the man said, laying his badge on the table. “This is Deputy Colver from the International Sorcerers Guild.”
The young man in the robe held up a silver medallion Lucas assumed was his badge.
“You are a remarkable young man,” Deputy Colver said with an appreciative nod.
“Uh, thanks,” Lucas said awkwardly. “I try.”
Agent Sampson pulled a computer chip out of his vest pocket and set it down on the table. They must have found it in the car. Tasha had hidden it somewhere in the back.
“Let’s talk about your brain.”
“It was Dr. Zhang,” Lucas blurted out. “He copied our brains to use in robot hovertanks. He’s probably working for Jer-, Nero.”
“No. I assure you Dr. Zhang is working for the BEA,” Agent Sampson said. “And now that his research has fallen into unfriendly hands, we are going to have to redouble our efforts. It looks like you are going to be playing a lot more video games, young man.”
“Great.”
Sam hurt everywhere. Her adrenaline high had completely worn off, and she wanted nothing more than to sleep for the next week and a half. The orange glow of the morning sun in the Student Health Center’s waiting room windows wasn’t helping either.
It turned out that, when it wasn’t getting beaten down by Nero and Cervantes, the BEA was a highly efficient organization.
They had whisked her out of the
casino and into a helicopter bound for Miller’s Grove in less than four minutes. In those four minutes, she had to make some very important decisions. As the last Hathaway and the current possessor of both the Lantern of the Blue Flame and the remains of the Witch Hunter’s Gauntlet, it was up to her to decide what to do with the magical artifacts. She decided to continue with her family’s wishes, so she returned the Lantern of the Blue Flame to the ISG and kept the gauntlet for herself. This decision seemed to make both the BEA and the ISG very unhappy, so she figured it was a good one.
Along the way, BEA nurses and ISG healers argued over how best to treat Sam’s cuts and burn. They even fussed over her hair, which she thought was pretty rude. In the end the healers won. Their special bandages could not only heal Sam’s injuries in an hour, but do it without leaving big, nasty telltale scars behind. They also assured Sam that Nero’s spell would wear off and she would regain full use of her left arm in a few hours. She was looking forward to that.
Shortly after getting back to campus, Agent Sampson and Deputy Colver made her tell them everything that had happened. In turn they had interviewed everyone else, a process that took several boring hours. While Zoey was being interviewed, a pair of sullen ISG witches approached Sam telling her that they were unable to save her hair. Apparently she hadn’t done as good a job of avoiding the great golden snake as she thought. A few strands of her bangs had turned to gold, and the witches had no idea how to turn them back. Considering the other things that could have happened to her, Sam figured she could live with it.
Sam was twisting the golden strands, which flexed and curled like normal hair, between her fingers when Natch strode back into the room and took a seat in the corner all by himself. That had to mean that Lucas had finally woken up. He was the last person to be interviewed, so as soon as he was done they could go.
Tasha and her parents sat on one side of the waiting room, discussing what had happened. They were very proud of their daughter and not nearly as angry or worried as Sam imagined Helen and Harold would be in their places. That was one reason Sam wasn’t going to tell them.
Zack and his mother sat on the other side of the room, away from everyone else. It took Sam a few minutes to remember where she had seen Zack’s mother before. Sam was forced to watch a movie about her in fourth-grade gym; she was Swiss athlete Astrid Luhner, now Astrid McQueen, the first woman to win gold medals in both the Summer and Winter Olympics. Apparently Zack’s father was too busy taking care of things at the casino to come check on his son.
Sam sat in the middle of the room with Zoey. Neither of them had much to say; Zoey looked nearly as tired as Sam felt. None of them were supposed to leave. Amy, Agent Rosenberg, stood guard at the door just to make sure. Sam was glad to see that she had survived her tussle with the dinosaur in one piece.
From what Sam had pieced together, the zombie dinosaur was about to eat Coach Powers when it suddenly turned back into a fossilized femur. That was probably at the exact moment Sam handed the Lantern of the Blue Flame over to Deputy Colver and he commanded the lantern to undo all of Nero’s resurrections. Sam wished she had thought of that.
She caught Zack eyeing the remains of the Witch Hunter’s Gauntlet in her lap.
“What?” she yelled loudly across the room.
“Oh, nothing,” Zack said innocently. “We’re just discussing how the gauntlet survived for thousands of years only to be destroyed by one touch from you.”
“Be polite,” his mother scolded. Although judging by the half-smile on her face, she didn’t really mean it.
Sam looked away.
She didn’t know how she had broken the priceless ancient magical artifact. She just did. It didn’t necessarily mean anything, or so she told herself repeatedly.
“Couldn’t get the gems to light up, huh?” Mr. Beaumont said, taking a seat near her. “Me either. Neither could your father.”
“What?” Sam asked in total shock.
“I was there, at Baldorag Castle, when your parents found the gauntlet,” he said proudly. “I’m not surprised you don’t know. We swore never to bring it up unless it was absolutely necessary.”
Sam didn’t know what to say. So many questions were competing for attention in her brain. She tried her best to pick the right one.
“What? How? When?” she blurted.
“It was years ago. A couple years before your parents got married,” he said with a far-off look in eye as the memories came flooding back. “Cervantes was on a rampage and your father got it into his head that he was going to be the one to stop him. Against your grandfather’s wishes I might add. Your mother was bound and determined to go with him. And since they were about to do battle with the most powerful vampire of our time, they came to my father for help. When he said no, I said yes. I was young, stupid, and ready to prove myself.
“So there we were, three college kids out to show the world how it was supposed to be done. Cervantes had let it slip that he was looking for the Witch Hunter’s Gauntlet. Your father tracked it down to Baldorag Castle, and we rushed to claim it before Cervantes could.” Mr. Beaumont shook his head. “It just goes to show how naïve we really were. Cervantes had let it slip on purpose and was using us to find the gauntlet for him. We led him straight to it.”
That was a lot to take in all of a sudden. But something in his story stuck out as wrong to her.
“Why did Cervantes want it?” she asked. “I thought it only worked for non-magical people.”
Mr. Beaumont nodded enthusiastically. “It does. We figured either he was going to give it to someone, someone he could control, or he just wanted to eliminate the only weapon that could stop him. We never found out which.”
“Because you got there first,” she guessed.
“Right, but we couldn’t get it to work,” he said. He still sounded a little embarrassed about it. “It turned out we weren’t the big heroes we thought we were, until Cervantes was about to kill your father. I can still remember it like it happened yesterday. He had Samuel by the throat, dangling in the air. My left leg was shattered; there was nothing I could do. And then suddenly the whole room lit up like the sun itself had fallen into the castle. When the light finally faded Cervantes had turned to ash, Samuel was gasping for air on the ground, and there stood your mother, wearing the gauntlet. And then just as suddenly, the gems went out and the gauntlet was useless again. None of us were ever able to get it to light up ever again, so your parents decided to hide it.”
“But how did she get it to work?”
“None of us knew for sure,” he said, shaking his head. “But I think it worked because your mother was trying to save someone she loved. I think that gave her the power, the pure emotional strength, to activate it.”
“But if it wouldn’t work for three heroes like you, why did it work for Nero?”
Mr. Beaumont laughed and then sighed. “I don’t know if you should go and throw the H-word around like that, although we certainly tried our best. But you have to consider the culture that created the gauntlet; back then their heroes were conquering kings, fearless warriors who challenged the gods themselves, men and women who made history with the tip of a sword. They were passionate, fearless, and ready to fight for what they believed in. Those qualities could apply to a hero or a villain. It all depends on how they choose to act on them.”
That wasn’t a comforting thought at all. Those ancient mystics should have put a little more thought into the design of their awesome magical weapon. Maybe they could have taken the time to teach it that people who want to save their friends and destroy vampires are good and people who want to start wars and turn people into zombies are bad.
“You know, I had the gauntlet in my hands before Nero even put it on,” Sam confessed. It was like admitting that she had set a church on fire or something equally horrible. “If I had been braver, I could have stopped all of this from happening.”
“But you did stop him, Sam,” Mr. Beaumont said, resting his hand reassur
ingly on her shoulder. Mrs. Beaumont and Tasha nodded in agreement.
“Yeah,” Zack spoke up from his side of the room, where he had clearly been eavesdropping. “Your patheticness was stronger than his courage. You beat him by being the world’s biggest loser. Way to go.”
The Beaumonts and Zoey gave him nasty looks. Natch just laughed. Zack’s mother cracked a tight little half-smile.
“That’s it!” Tasha sprung to her feet, fire in her eyes.
“It’s okay,” Sam said to everyone. “He’s sort of right.”
Sam might have been mad at him if the thought hadn’t already occurred to her.
“My patheticness was like kryptonite to the gauntlet,” she said, patting the twisted metal in her lap.
Mr. Beaumont winced. “I don’t know if I’d phrase it like that-“
“Hey, at least I did better than hiding in a broom closet waiting for the BEA to show up.” Okay, so she did have to get in at least one little dig on Zack. It wasn’t like he didn’t deserve it.
Mr. Beaumont chuckled softly. “Yes, you did. In fact, if you hadn’t been draining power away from the gauntlet at the time, I’m positive he would have teleported away with the entire gauntlet.”
“Do you think his half still works?” It was the million-dollar question. If his piece still worked, all of this could just start all over again.
“I don’t think so,” Mr. Beaumont said. From the tone in his voice, she could tell he had been thinking about it for quite a while now. “I also don’t think he knew that teleporting away at half power would splinter it. Wherever he is, he isn’t happy.”
Something was still nagging at her.
“Do you think this means there won’t be another Heroic Age?” she asked softly, afraid of the answer.
“What do you mean?”
“The Witch Hunter’s Gauntlet is also called the Hero’s Glove because whenever it is discovered it ushers in a new Heroic Age, right? But this time it was broken. There might never be another Heroic Age.”