Their riders had bloody stumps where their heads should have been. They were identically dressed in long black coats with silver crests on the sleeves. Their capes rippled out behind them as they rode like great wings, and they wielded flaming silver swords in their large gauntlet-covered hands.
Zoey wondered how they could see without their heads.
One of the headless riders stretched out his free hand, and a silver fireball emerged above his palm like magic. The fireball opened eyes that blazed with silver fire. The fireballs were the horsemen’s heads!
Zoey forgot to breathe.
The head looked around for a moment and sneered. Its mouth was full of pointy teeth like a cat.
Zoey choked on the heat and the smell of rotten flesh.
The three remaining agents scrambled towards Zoey - but too late. A horseman galloped in a blur of speed and positioned himself between Zoey and the agents. He brandished his sword and severed the agents’ heads in one powerful swing. Their bodies crumpled to the ground.
Zoey and the others flattened themselves against the wall, and the horse trotted by them so closely that she could smell the rot from its body. She couldn’t tell if the smell came from the horseman or his horse. Probably both.
The horseman wiped his blade on his leg. For a horrible moment, she thought he had spotted them, but the horse finally turned and made its way back to the other horsemen.
Tristan turned to Zoey. “The Headless Horsemen,” he said in a low voice, “Rank Twelve mystics. I’ve never thought I’d actually see one.” He turned his attention back on the scene.
“You say that like it’s a good thing,” she whispered back.
Zoey knew that Rank Twelve mystics were the worst and most dangerous. She had no idea how to defeat even one, and there were five of them.
Tristan reached inside his jacket and pulled out an S9 Pro slingshot and a small dagger. “It’s not a good thing,” he whispered. “In fact, it’s the complete opposite of a good thing.”
He then pulled out Zoey’s golden boomerang and handed it to her. “Thought you might want this. I grabbed it from your room.”
Zoey cringed at the thought of Tristan in her messy bedroom.
“Thank you. I’m glad to see my little friend again.” She grasped it firmly in her right hand.
The headless horsemen sat straight in their saddles, their stallions slashing their tails impatiently. It was impossible to tell if they knew that Zoey and her friends were hiding on the fringes of the battle.
“I don’t think our weapons are going to be very useful against the horsemen,” said Tristan, “but you never know, we might get lucky.”
Simon held out his caterpillar-looking mustache to Tristan. “If I don’t make it - you can keep my furry friend.”
Tristan made a face. “I’ll pass, thanks.”
Simon shrugged, “Suit yourself.” He pressed his mustache back under his nose.
Zoey watched as the horsemen formed a line and waited. “Do they have a weakness? There must be something we can try that’ll slow them down?”
At that moment, one of the heads seemed to have heard her and turned slowly towards her in the palm of the horseman’s outstretched hand. Its unblinking eyes were fixed on her. She resisted the urge to shiver. She turned to Simon and Tristan, but they both shrugged.
“Watch out!”
Tristan pulled Simon and Zoey to the ground. Heat grazed the top of Zoey’s head as she hit the cold marble floor, smashing her knee into the stone. She ignored the pain and looked up to see that the wall behind the spot where she had been standing a second ago had a great hole in it and was ablaze in silver fire.
The five horsemen raised their swords and steered their great steeds towards her. The horses screeched like banshees.
“Well, it was nice knowing you, guys,” said Simon. He armed his slingshot with a metal pellet. “Make sure someone feeds my goldfish.”
Zoey raised her boomerang, her heart hammering like a drum. “Nobody’s dying today. Here they come, get ready.”
The five headless horsemen charged. The ground shook. Zoey swallowed. She raised her boomerang—
“HORSEMEN!” Voices called.
Agent Barnes and Agent Lee stood in the main hall behind the horsemen. The horsemen turned away from the kids, changed their course and faced the oncoming agents.
“What do we have here, Agent Lee?” Agent Barnes strode confidently towards the horsemen.
“It’s the brainless horsemen. Haven’t seen the likes of them in quite some time. Weren’t you guys off doing a movie or something?”
Agent Lee pulled a giant gun from the pleats of his long coat. “Five against two. I like those odds.”
“Now you’re talking,” said Agent Barnes.
He shouted to them, “Hey, instead of hunting little kids, how about a real challenge with some muscle? Unless you’re too scared. But maybe you don’t even understand what I’m saying. Must be hard for you to fathom the words without heads. Am I right?”
The steeds bucked, and even though they had no faces, Zoey could tell by the tension in their bodies that the horsemen didn’t like to be insulted.
Agent Barnes met Zoey’s eyes and motioned behind him. She nodded that she understood.
He smiled and raised a double-barreled shotgun with a blue glass barrel on the top.
“So what do you say, eh? Do you need some time to put your heads together to come up with a plan?” He laughed at his own joke.
The horsemen outstretched their hands, and five fiery silver heads appeared in their palms.
“Is that supposed to impress us?” mocked Agent Barnes. “Oooh. You can make fire-heads appear in your hands.” He sneered wickedly. “We can make fire, too!”
Both Agent Barnes and Agent Lee fired.
Zoey was expecting to see liquid fire come from the barrels of the guns. But instead, lashes of electric blue lightning flashed towards the horsemen. The first two horsemen fell off their horses, and their bodies sizzled in blue current. While the fallen horsemen struggled to their feet, the other three hurled their heads at the agents.
“INCOMING!” Agent Barnes and Lee rolled out of the way, just as the three silver fireballs came hurtling past them and scorched the wall behind them completely black.
Zoey grabbed hold of Tristan and Simon. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”
She didn’t have to convince them. They sneaked around the back of the horsemen and sprinted for the front doors. They ran through the smoke and debris, and - to Zoey’s horror - a few more piles of black ashes. When they got to the door, she turned around. Agent Barnes and Agent Lee were in full combat against five horsemen. They fired their guns, and the horsemen fell, but they always got up. The Rank Twelve mystics were hard-core, and she wondered if anyone could defeat such foes. If the agents’ special guns couldn’t defeat them, then what would?
Zoey pushed open the front doors and ran out into the cold. She froze in her tracks.
Thirty headless horsemen were engaged in battle and trying to push their way into the Hive. Twenty well-disciplined agents stood, lined up like a wall, and were doing their best to repel the attacks. But Zoey quickly noticed more dead bodies and piles of ashes. The headless horsemen were throwing everything they had at the Hive’s defenses, but the defenders kept repelling their attacks and forcing them back.
A cry broke above the clamor of battle.
Zoey’s blood turned to ice. It was Aria.
Without thinking, Zoey ran wildly towards the scream. She heard Tristan screaming her name but ignored him. Aria was in trouble. She ran in desperation to save one of the only people she loved. They couldn’t take Aria away from her. She would kill them all.
She spotted Aria cowering against a car in the parking lot. She was bleeding from a large gash on her side. A headless horseman towered above her, his sword at her throat.
“LEAVE HER ALONE!”
Zoey hurled her boomerang. It shot through the air li
ke a bullet and made contact with the horseman’s sword. The sword slipped out of his hand and landed in the snow.
The horseman steered his horse away from Aria and towards Zoey. He stood in silence and stared at her.
“Zoey, no!” cried Aria. “What are you doing? Get out of here!”
Zoey planted her feet in the snow, reached up, and caught her ricocheting boomerang easily. Even though it was the dead of winter, she felt like she was on fire. She wanted to kill the creature more than anything in the world. She felt wild and fearless.
And then the horseman did something unexpected. He dismounted.
He searched the ground and pulled his blazing silver sword from a heap of snow. He lifted it up in front of his chest as if in a salute, and then marched through the snow towards Zoey. He waved his sword back and forth as he came towards her, as though he was cutting an invisible path.
“Zoey, no!” cried Aria desperately, but Zoey didn’t really hear her. All she heard was the pounding of her own heart in her ears.
The horseman was so close that she could smell the filth from his rotten flesh. He raised his sword like an executioner and swung it down in a powerful downward arc towards Zoey’s head. She waited till the last second, then ducked and rolled out of the way. The blade hissed by her ear as she spun around. Another giant swing came at her. She leaped out of the way again, but she was not fast enough.
Fire cut into her skin, and she screamed. It was like someone had poured acid on her arm. Black spots obscured her vision momentarily, and she felt dizzy from the pain. She blinked. Blood ran from the gash in her arm to her fingers and turned her hand into a red glove.
She knew she’d die if she stayed where she was, and her instincts kicked in. As the horseman lifted his sword for another strike, she drove her boot into his knee. He faltered for a moment. She shook off the pain. She knew she needed to kill him. But how?
The horseman swung again, and she parried with her boomerang and knocked him off balance. He struck again, and the weight of his sword knocked her down. She fell, rolled, and came up to parry his strikes with the edge of her boomerang. Every time he struck she felt the strain in her arms. She couldn’t keep this up much longer.
The horseman slashed again. Her boomerang collided with the sword with the loud clatter of metal hitting metal, and it deflected the blade for a second. But not long enough.
Swish.
Zoey blinked, and the tip of the horseman’s sword slashed her leg. More of the fire shot into her leg where the sword had cut through her jeans. She screamed and doubled over, gasping at the white-hot pain. She spun around and fell into the snow.
Aria’s voice rang in her ears. She crawled away from him, but slipped on a patch of ice and went down. He moved toward her and kicked her in the stomach. She went sprawling into the snow.
The horseman stood there, watching her with no face. His shoulders rose up and down as he laughed at her.
It was over. She was going to die.
Chapter 11
A Leap of Faith
The headless horseman stood over her with the tip of his blade at her throat. As he stepped forward, something gold glinted above him.
He raised his sword, taking aim.
Zoey raised her arm above her head and caught her boomerang.
He slashed downward with his mighty sword as she shot her boomerang directly into the horseman’s bloody stump.
The sword fell into the snow an inch beside her head. The horseman backed away, throwing up his arms violently, trying desperately to get the boomerang out of his stump. But he couldn’t. His horse neighed with its eyes wide in fear. Suddenly, the horseman went rigid. His body cracked and then crumbled into dust and flew away in a gust of wind. Her boomerang fell into the snow. She heard a cry. And when she turned, all that was left of the horse was a pile of black ashes.
“ZOEY!”
Aria limped towards her. Her face was sweaty, and her gray skin was almost white. She looked sick. She fell to her knees beside Zoey.
“What were you thinking? You could have gotten yourself killed.”
“I was thinking,” panted Zoey, “that I wanted to save you.”
Aria winced and pressed on the gash in her side. “Well, I can’t say that I’m not grateful for what you did, but taking on a headless horseman on your own is completely crazy. But thank you all the same.”
Aria searched Zoey for injuries, and her yellow eyes widened. “You’re bleeding on your arm and leg. You’re hurt.”
“Just a scratch,” said Zoey, staring at the large amount of blood that was seeping through Aria’s fingers as she tried to stem the flow from her own wound. “You’re the one who’s hurt, Aria. You’re losing a lot of blood. I need to get you to the medical bay.”
Aria winced. “I guess you’re right.”
Zoey struggled to her feet and fetched her boomerang. Once it was safely secured to her bracelet, she pulled Aria gently to her feet. Her stomach tightened at the look of pain in Aria’s eyes, and she forced herself to look away, fighting the tears. And when she looked towards the Hive, her heart sank even more.
Only a few agents were still alive. They were defending the Hive as best they could. Holding their own amongst the agents were Tristan and Simon. But the battle was still far from over.
“Doesn’t look like we can go anywhere,” said Aria, her voice almost a whisper now.
Zoey knew that Aria would most certainly die if she didn’t get inside soon. She wanted to join her friends and fight, even if it meant dying with them. Maybe she could sneak Aria in somehow. She didn’t know what to do.
“I’m getting you inside,” she said, making up her mind.
She wrapped Aria’s two left arms around her own shoulder to support her, and started forward.
Suddenly, the Hive’s front doors burst open, and Agent Barnes and Agent Lee rushed out with wild expressions on their faces.
“Giddy up, horsey!” Agent Barnes fired his gun repeatedly into the thick of the horsemen like a madman. Agent Lee whistled while he fired alongside his partner.
“Now, Agent Franken!” bellowed Agent Barnes, as he kept firing.
The doors opened again, and Agent Franken waddled out. He held a small green globe in his hands, and he kicked it like a football. It soared into the air and landed with a thud in the middle of the army of headless horsemen. For a moment nothing happened. Then the globe exploded in a shower of green dust. The dust fell on the horsemen like rain. The horsemen and their horses withered, cracked, and then exploded in clouds of black dust.
The horsemen who had not been covered with the green dust steered their horses away from the Hive, galloped down across the grounds, and disappeared into the forest.
“There’s more where that came from!” shouted Agent Franken. He tried to raise his old fist in the air but only managed to get it halfway. “You cowards!”
Tristan, Simon, and Agent Ward came rushing to Zoey’s aid.
“Aria’s hurt really bad,” said Zoey, “We need to get her to the medical bay.”
“I’ll do that,” said Agent Ward. She was bleeding from a cut on her forehead and looked pretty disheveled, but her voice was strong. She looked at Zoey, and her eyes were full of compassion. “You did good, Zoey,” she said. “Thank you for keeping our Aria safe.”
Zoey smiled and watched Agent Ward and Aria disappear through the front doors.
“You’re bleeding, too, Zoey,” said Tristan. He frowned when he examined her leg. “Maybe you should go to the medical bay.”
Zoey shook her head. “It’s nothing.”
She looked around nervously. Now that the enemy had left for the time being, she was worried that the agents would come and lock her up again. She couldn’t let that happen.
“I don’t get it,” said Simon, still wearing his mustache. “Why did the horsemen take off like that?”
“To regroup, most probably,” answered Agent Barnes, as he slung his gun on his shoulder. “They’ll be b
ack with reinforcements. I’m not sure we can survive another big attack.”
The front doors opened again, and Agents Vargas and Ward came out with towels and medical supplies to help the wounded. Agent Franken hung back by the doors. His face was wrinkled in sadness, and he looked like he was about to cry.
“We lost a lot of good agents,” said Agent Lee, looking around. “Without help, we won’t last another day like this. We’re going to get slaughtered.”
“By the horsemen?” asked Zoey.
“It’s not just the horsemen,” said Agent Barnes, watching the spot where the horsemen had disappeared. “With the borders down, more hostiles will come. A lot more horsemen and more of the other kinds, too.”
Agent Lee took off his sunglasses and rubbed them with his shirt. “It’s obvious they plan on going after us first, so that nothing will stand in their way when they go for the rest of the human population.”
“If we don’t find a way to get the borders back up soon,” said Agent Barnes, “there won’t be an Agency anymore. Here, or anywhere else in the world.”
“I know how to get the borders back up,” blurted Zoey, before she could control herself.
Both Agent Barnes and Agent Lee stared at her open-mouthed. Heat rose to her cheeks. “Well, I think I know how…with Agent Franken’s help.”
Agent Barnes eyed her. “If you know something, Zoey, tell us.”
Zoey swallowed. “Agent Franken says he could make an antidote if he had a sample of the original source.”
“Go on,” urged Agent Barnes.
“Mrs. Dupont has it. I mean, she’s the one that did this. I’d bet my life that she poisoned the mirrors. So, it makes sense that she would have the original source. We find her, and we find the cure.”
Agent Barnes and Agent Lee shared a look. “What proof do you have? Don’t look at me like that, I’m not saying I don’t believe you, but how do you know for sure she’s the one that did it?”
“I just do,” said Zoey stubbornly. “I know it. I feel it in my gut. She did this.”
“But you might be wrong.”
“I might,” said Zoey, “but it’s worth a shot, don’t you think? I mean, we should be trying anything to help, right?”
Mystics 3-Book Collection Page 36