“Shroud of Tartarus!”
Cervantes hissed.
A solid
wall of shadow appeared in midair between him and the dazzling blade.
“Nic
e try,” Nero said, slicing through the blackness.
Cervantes threw more shadows at him
, but Nero shredded each of them, laughing all the while and getting closer to Cervantes with every swing.
Sam knew she had to act fast.
“Go deaf,” she whispered to the lantern.
At that exact moment two very important th
ings happened: Nero stabbed Cervantes in the chest, and Sam pulled the trigger.
A head-
splitting screech erupted from the sonic blaster. Sam felt her teeth rattle in her jaw, and her brain threatened to shoot out of her ears, but she kept her finger locked on the trigger. Everywhere she looked, Sam saw people writhing in pain, their hands clamped over their ears. For the one hundredth time in less than ten minutes, she really wished her left arm still worked.
Most importantly
, Nero had been forced to release his sword to protect his ears.
The only person not writhing in pain was the person with the most cause. Cervantes hung
in the air with the sun sword run through his heart and sticking out his back, gray ash spread out from the wound consuming his body.
But in his eyes Sam saw neither fear nor pain, but simple determination and anger.
As his body deteriorated into nothingness, he brought his gigantic sword down on Nero. At the last second Nero must have noticed this, because he instinctively raised his hand to defend himself. The sword sliced through his arm just below the Witch Hunter’s Gauntlet. The sword, gauntlet, and the rest of Nero crashed to the ground followed by the fluttering ashes of Cervantes’ body.
Cervantes was little more than a floating head, but Sam saw that he was yelling something. She suddenly found that she wanted to know what he had to say in is final moments so she released the trigger.
“-eth!”
And then he was gone, his ashes blown away by the dying winds of the shrinking tornadoes.
“My hand!”
Nero
crawled forward, his right arm tucked into his lab coat; his armor had vanished the moment his hand was severed, and he had crashed to the floor cradling his bleeding stump. But he was still the closest person to the gauntlet. If he reached it, Sam knew that this whole battle would start all over again.
Sam limped forward as fast as she could. Every step made her leg bur
n more than the last. But Nero was only inches away from the bloody gauntlet. She wasn’t going to make it.
“
Ow! Ow! What the-?” Nero screamed. Two rabbits were biting his ankles.
As he stopped to kick the rabbits away
, Sam dove for the gauntlet grabbing it by the fingers. To her surprise several of the gemstones lit up. Then she saw the reason: Nero had reached the base of the gauntlet. The stones on his end had lit up, but the ones on her end were still dark.
He laughed a dee
p maniacal laugh. His eyes were sunken and tired but fueled by pain and rage. More gemstones lit up on his side. Thin tendrils of magic reached for him.
At that moment
, Sam realized she was about to become a rabbit or a statue or worse.
I’m going to die. I’m going to die without saving the world.
Without making the slightest difference.
The longest second ever ticked by
and she was still alive. Nero seemed to be just as surprised and confused as she was.
“You’ve just doomed us all,” he spat at her.
The gauntlet exploded in a burst of blinding green light.
When she opened her eyes
, Sam saw that Nero had disappeared, leaving her with half a gauntlet, twisted and broken. And his severed hand.
She threw up.
“-an unexpected Halloween treat last night in Las Vegas as thousands of tourists witnessed an unscheduled special effects spectacle.”
“Brilliant.”
Lucas’ head felt like it was about to explode. When he opened his eyes, the sensation only got worse.
“This amate
ur video was shot by a Tucson man in town for an electronics convention.”
His eyes refused to focus; it was like he hadn’t used them for years.
“Hey, look at that. You are alive.”
Lucas sat up. The blurry image in front of him finally congealed. It was Natch holding a TV remote.
Confused, Lucas scanned the room. He was in some sort of hospital.
And then it all came rushing back to him.
“Jerry is a genetically altered super-bad guy! Cervantes! The gauntlet!” he blurted out. “Did Sam get it? Is she okay? Am I a vampire?”
“Are you a what?” Natch shook his head like he thought Lucas was completely nuts.
“Dude, calm down. You are rambling. You passed out in your virtual reality game pod and they brought you to the Student Health Center.”
“What?” Lucas couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “No
, you were there. Sort of. Remember, you called me when I was flying away from-“
He was interrupted by Natch’s laughter.
“It happened, it happened. I’m just messing with you,” he said, making calming gestures with his hands. “The gauntlet was broken and everyone is fine. And you are not a vampire. You should be so lucky.”
“Jerk!”
Lucas pulled one of the pillows out from behind his head and hurled it at Natch. He missed by over a foot, which just made Natch laugh even more.
“Check it out, you’re on TV.”
Lucas hadn’t paid any attention to the TV on the wall. Apparently Natch had muted it when he saw Lucas was waking up, but up on the screen he saw shaky handheld camera footage of himself flying Santa’s sleigh up over the pirate ship with Cervantes on his trail. The image was too blurry to see who was in the car. Even Lucas couldn’t tell it was him.
“The BEA covered up the whole thing by telling people it was all a part o
f 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 ju
st how close he had come to being caught. But seeing it now, he was surprised he was alive.
Instinctively his hand reached for his fore
head. 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 wa
s 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 p
robably 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 th
e 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.