“Got it,” said Tristan. “We’ll keep you safe, don’t worry.”
“Good.” Agent Franken said. “I picked you lot because I believe in the three of you . . . and in me of course.”
Agent Franken’s belief in her made Zoey feel invincible. She could tackle all the Alphas singlehandedly. She caught Tristan smiling at her and felt the blood rise in her face.
Agent Franken stared at the scene in silence again. And then after a moment, he raised his hand again and said, “Now!”
Together, the three of them began to cross the grounds towards the portal. Zoey had a bad feeling that Agent Franken’s slowness would get them all killed, but Tristan took over and attacked anything that came near them with his silver dagger. His skin gleamed blue as he punched and kicked a path for them. Zoey and Simon protected the back, and the team fought their way towards the portal doing their best to keep Agent Franken alive.
Simon flung homemade explosives with his S9 slingshot. He hit a rat-faced Alpha man in the face, and he exploded in a sticky pink mess.
Zoey kicked and slashed, using her boomerang like a sword. She had to keep Agent Franken safe, and the only way to do that was to get the Alphas to focus on them instead of him. They had to shield him until they reached the portal.
For one exciting minute, Zoey thought they were winning. She hurled her boomerang and knocked down four unsuspecting Alphas. A young Alpha panicked when he saw her and ran face-first into another Alpha, knocking them both out cold.
Another mystic with large bat wings screeched and tried to fly away, but Tristan grabbed him by the legs and sent him spiraling into the forest.
Even Simon showed skill and bravery as he knocked out two large Alpha men with an explosive shot of yellow slime.
But for every one they put down, twenty more appeared. It was an impenetrable force. They hadn’t even made it halfway to the portal. The giant blue hole seemed hopelessly out of reach.
After half an hour of fighting and dodging, Zoey’s blistered hands and skinny frame couldn’t take much more. She wished she had Tristan’s super strength. She saw the strain on Simon’s face, and Tristan looked even worse. He had fought ten times more Alphas than Zoey and Simon combined and looked drained. His glowing blue skin had dimmed, like his battery was failing. He clutched his chest with his right arm, while he fought with his left. She could see blood seeping through his fingers. He was injured.
As Zoey blundered towards Tristan, an Alpha broke through behind her. She spun around and raised her weapon, but Agent Franken got there first. He swung his carry-on bag and smacked the Alpha with surprising force for someone so small. The Alpha fell unconscious.
Miraculously, Agent Franken was still safe.
Zoey could feel her hope of finding her mother washing away.
Mrs. Dupont had guarded her great portal with such enormous strength that Zoey wondered if they were fighting for a lost cause. Where was the woman anyway? Peering down at them grotesquely from her grand mansion? Just the thought of her made Zoey’s blood boil.
The combat seemed to break for a moment, but Zoey’s relief soon vanished when a new enemy came forward.
A group of twenty fur-covered little mystics in t-shirts and jeans came towards them. They looked like ugly children with beards. They flexed the black talons on their grubby little fingers, and their red eyes glowed with hatred and excitement. They were as cute and cuddly as hungry panthers.
Zoey exchanged a worried look with Tristan and Simon and then moved and made a protective wall in front of Agent Franken.
The hairy babies circled around them.
“I feel like I’m in a Halloween Pampers commercial,” said Simon, breathing heavily.
“Does anybody know what these things are? I’m not sure whether to whack them with my sling shot or offer them milk.”
Agent Franken opened his mouth, “They’re—”
“Werewolves,” said one of the ugly babies in a chipmunk sort of voice. He had a white tuft of fur on the top of his head like a Mohawk. “There’s nothing more we hate than Agent cubs. And here you are . . . in our territory.”
Zoey couldn’t help herself. Maybe it was her nerves, but she started laughing.
“Werewolves? You can’t possibly be werewolves! Werewolves are big and super strong and . . .” She looked at them again questioningly, “. . . and a lot older. You guys are like tiny little furry babies—”
“Babies!” said one of the miniature werewolves in that same kind of chipmunk voice, as if it had inhaled some helium balloons. “Who you callin’ babies? You’re the ones that look like babies. You’re cubs. We could smell you a mile away.”
The mystic sneered, its mouth full of sharp teeth. It wore a yellow t-shirt that said: BITE ME.
“Young meat is the most tender,” said another werewolf. “. . . So juicy and warm, it melts in your mouth. I’m going to get me a piece of the blond. He looks tasty.”
Simon looked offended. “What? No way. No one’s eating me, furball.”
“We’ll see about that,” said the werewolf with the white Mohawk.
Zoey couldn’t see any females among them. And the other Alphas avoided them, like they were afraid of the werewolves or had been told by someone not to interfere.
“Mrs. Dupont sent you, didn’t she?” pressed Zoey.
She looked up towards the big house on the hillside. “Thought she’d try and get rid of us before we reached the portal. Well, we’re not giving up so easily.”
“Yeah,” said Simon. “We’re OSC. We can take care of a few gremlins.”
“This is werewolf territory,” said the werewolf leader. “I’ve marked it—”
“What do you mean you’ve marked it?” asked Simon, and then made a face when he realized what the little wolf-man meant. “. . . That’s disgusting and unsanitary. Do you know how many diseases you’re spreading by—?”
“My pack is hungry,” said the leader.
He inched forward. “I haven’t fed them today, and I promised them a special feast of human flesh, and now here you are, ripe for the plucking.”
“Come any closer, and I’ll be plucking the fur off your head, dog,” growled Tristan. He brandished his dagger, but Zoey wasn’t sure that was the best thing to do.
The pack leader’s red eyes flared with hatred.
“You dare call us dog! I’ll be killing you first.” He looked at Tristan, “but not before I rip that tongue out of your mouth!”
“Kill him boss,” said a red-furred pimple-faced werewolf. “Rip his heart out. I wanna play fetch with it.”
“Yeah!” agreed a werewolf with a protruding forehead. “I want to chew on his intestines—no wait—I want the one in the space suit!”
Tristan started forward, but Agent Franken held him back. “Do not be fooled by their size, young man,” he whispered. “Werewolves are some of the most ferocious mystics, much worse than a pack of wild dogs. They fight to the death, and they almost always win. They are a lot stronger than they look—”
“I don’t care,” said Tristan. “We can beat them.”
Zoey could tell he had lost some of his confidence. They all needed a breather, but it didn’t look like that was going to happen.
The pack leader called out. “Looks like cub meat’s back on the menu, boys!”
Suddenly the werewolves scrambled around and climbed on top of one another until they looked like furry totem poles covered with sharp claws.
Simon stifled a laugh. “What do you make of those?”
But before Zoey could answer, the totem poles attacked. The bigger werewolves on the bottom supported them, and they moved surprisingly fast.
“Agent Franken, get behind me,” called Zoey.
She moved forward and shielded him with her body. Simon and Tristan formed a protective circle around him and drew their weapons.
Two werewolf-totem poles launched themselves ferociously at Tristan. Eight pairs of slashing arms lashed out at him. They hissed and
growled as they cut through his clothes like they were tissue paper and tore at his skin until it bled.
“Tristan!” screamed Zoey.
But as she staggered towards him, two werewolf-totem poles boxed her in. They spit and hissed white foam like rabid dogs.
She saw Simon fire a few rounds at the last werewolf-totem pole, while Agent Franken whacked it with his bag.
Zoey cursed and raised her boomerang.
They launched their attack.
She moved on instinct. She spun and threw her boomerang. It flew ten feet, hit the middle guy of the first werewolf-totem pole in the chest, and unbalanced them for a second. For one glorious moment, Zoey thought she had toppled them, but they held on. The beasts straightened themselves, shrieked, growled, and hissed, and then charged again.
“I’m going to rip out your heart and eat it while it’s still beating,” growled the werewolf with the zit face. His face was almost at Zoey’s level. “I’m going to taste flesh tonight!”
He shot out a claw, and Zoey hit it away with the edge of her weapon.
They were too close. She didn’t have enough space for a good shot, but she had no other choice.
She could feel the hot breath of the other werewolf-totem pole on the back of her neck. It was right behind her. She reached back as far as she could, spun around, and whipped her boomerang at the head of the werewolf on top.
Crunch!
His body went limp, but he didn’t fall. It was like he was glued to the other guy’s shoulders.
Zoey grabbed her boomerang as it returned. She had to try again. She wasn’t about to be eaten by the ugliest furry babies she’d ever seen. Breathing heavily, she crouched and readied herself—
Searing pain erupted in her back.
Zoey stumbled forward. Her arms were pinned behind her.
She screamed.
A creature raked her arm with its claws and scratched her hand.
She dropped her weapon.
Another creature landed on her back and sank its teeth into her scalp.
She shouted with pain and tried to throw him off, but she couldn’t.
Little hands and claws grabbed at her. They slashed her skin and bit her, and she couldn’t do anything to stop them. It was the most horrifying feeling in the world. She tried desperately not to the let dread overcome her, but she felt panic rise like a hot fever.
She blinked the blood from her eyes and saw the other werewolf-ladder approach. Their red eyes gleamed in excitement and hunger. The beasts rushed in close to her and snapped at her face. The fiends were everywhere, shrieking and biting, tearing her exposed flesh. They were going to eat her alive. She could hear Simon and Tristan screaming.
Zoey kicked out in desperation, striking as hard as she could at anything that moved.
It worked. The totem pole wavered, and the four werewolves tumbled to the ground.
The distraction was all that she needed.
She reached back and head-butted something behind her, a skull hopefully. Her arms were released immediately, and she collapsed to the ground. But something that smelled like dog latched itself onto her back. She reached back, grabbed it, and threw its furry form to the earth.
She ignored the pain in her back and the many bleeding and burning gashes around her arms and scrambled to her feet in search of her boomerang. She found it half buried in the ground and kicked it free.
“You cannot win,” said a werewolf with scars all over its face.
“Surrender now, and maybe we’ll give you a quick death.”
He climbed over his brothers as they reformed their totem pole. Now two mystic ladders stood in front of her.
Zoey spit the dirt from her mouth and looked over to her friends.
Tristan moved so fast that his movements were a blur. He bellowed like an angry animal, and his daggers spun through the air so fast they hummed. Although he fought like a champion, slicing the werewolves two or three at a time, he still faced one angry werewolf-totem pole. Zoey could see that he was running only on adrenaline.
Simon wasn’t so lucky. Although he was limping, and blood seeped from his shirt and jeans, he still fired his weapon. He stood protectively over a silver bundle on the ground—Agent Franken. Zoey couldn’t tell if he was alive or dead.
Her blood boiled, and she let it fuel her with new vigor.
“I’ll never surrender,” she answered finally. If she couldn’t defeat the werewolves, then she would have to come back with reinforcements. But how? What was the weakest point of a tall, narrow building?
And then it hit her. She knew what to do.
“Come get me if you can, dogs,” taunted Zoey.
The werewolves sneered.
“Die, agent cub!” they shouted.
“Kill her!”
“Rip her apart! Make her suffer!”
“I want her hair!”
The two werewolf-ladders charged, slashing and stabbing as they hurtled forward.
Zoey took a breath, raised her right arm, angled her boomerang, and shot.
The golden weapon soared in the air like a kite caught in the wind. It soared higher and higher until it was but a yellow speck in the sky.
The werewolves couldn’t help themselves. They stopped and started laughing.
“Ooops,” one chuckled. “Did the little agent cub lose her weapon?”
“Why did you throw it away?” laughed the pimple-faced one. “You want to die, don’t you? We’ll help you along with that.”
“Are you too scared to fight?” another snickered.
Zoey stood stone-faced and waited as calmly as she could. She counted in her head.
Three . . .
The two ugly totem poles wavered as they laughed. None of them paid any attention to the spinning golden boomerang shooting back down towards them at lightning speed.
Two . . . one . . .
SMACK! CLUNK!
The weapon hit the backs of both werewolves’ knees.
The effect was immediate. First the mystics howled in pain, and then one by one, the totem poles collapsed.
Dust flew in the air as the werewolves toppled on top of one another, screaming, punching, and trying to pull themselves out from under the rubble of dirt and fur.
But Zoey didn’t wait. She went straight to work.
She shot her boomerang again and again into the pile of werewolf cubs, until every single one of them was out cold and lay in the dirt.
But she didn’t stop there. She knew her friends were in trouble.
In pain, and on the verge of collapsing, Zoey stumbled over to Simon.
The werewolves were attacking him like a pack of wild dogs. They swarmed him and sank their teeth into his hands. He yelled in pain and dropped his slingshot.
He drew a small blade from his pocket and slashed and stabbed at those he could reach. His blue eyes were wide with terror.
When he saw Zoey he screamed. “Help! Get them off! Get them off!”
Zoey leaped over Agent Franken’s body, hoping that he was still alive, and grabbed on to the first werewolf’s legs. She threw him ten feet into the air, and he crashed to the ground in a heap.
She kicked and whacked her boomerang on the remaining creatures. In an instant, Tristan was fighting beside her, and they hit the werewolves until Simon was free.
“No one told us about werewolves!” cried Simon exasperatedly. “How come no one ever told us how insane they were?”
He kicked an unconscious werewolf.
Zoey remembered Agent Franken.
She ran back towards the little man. He lay on his side. His eyes were closed, but when she kneeled down beside him, she saw that he was breathing.
“Thank God, you’re alive,” she whispered to him.
His Hazmat suit was ripped like it had been in a paper shredder, but somehow the suit had kept him alive. She looked behind her.
“I don’t know how long the werewolves will stay down, but the Alphas are looking our way. It won’t take long
before they see us.”
Tristan bent down and easily lifted the unconscious science officer into his arms.
“Let’s get back to the anchor.”
“So that’s it then?” said Simon, looking like he’d been to hell and back. “We’ve failed? The world is going to end? But it can’t end. Not now! I’ve never even had a date yet!”
His voice rose, and Zoey caught sight of a few Alphas turning their way.
Zoey eyes darted to the big blue hole.
“If only we could get past the Alphas somehow, then we’d have a chance to shut down the portals.” And save my mother, she wanted to say but didn’t.
She could see a tall man with dark hair and a pale face fighting among the crowd. His dark eyes were fixed on Zoey.
“Is that Director Martin over there?” she asked. She had recognized his hateful scowl instantly. But when she blinked, he was gone.
Simon followed her gaze. “I don’t see him. It wasn’t him. Probably just some guy who looks like him.”
Zoey rubbed her eyes. “Yeah, you’re probably right.”
“We need a bigger army,” said Tristan with conviction. “It’s the only way. If we could push back the Alpha army with force, then maybe we’d have a fighting chance.”
His skin was back to its original olive color, and he had a nasty purple bruise over his left eye. He held Agent Franken in his arms as if the little man weighed no more than a large house cat.
Agent Franken’s face was sickly pale, and Zoey was worried about him.
“Well, whatever we do,” she said urgently, “we can’t stay here and think of a plan. We need to split. Agent Franken needs medical attention, and we need to go, like now.”
She pointed to the mass of Alphas galloping towards them with weapons drawn and malicious grins on their distorted faces.
“Wish we had an invisibility cloak,” said Simon miserably as he stared at the ground. “Then we’d get through for sure.”
Zoey jumped on the spot, her hands on her head. “That’s it!”
“That’s what?” asked Simon and Tristan together.
“Simon, you’re a genius!” A giant smile of relief spread across Zoey’s face.
Simon looked puzzled and pleased at the same time.
“I am? Huh . . . right . . . of course I am . . . and can you remind me why I’m such a genius?” He looked at Tristan who shrugged. Both of them looked completely lost.
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