Mystics #1: The Seventh Sense (2 page)

Foster mother number 28 howled like an animal. Her fingers and toes began
to transform into gleaming black talons. Her skin cracked and broke apart like shattered
eggshells. As her body shook, her skin peeled away and fell in clumps to the
floor in a pool of black liquid.

Before they had a chance to move, a seven-foot creature with dripping
black sores and raw bubbling skin stood in the kitchen in front of them. Six
blunt spikes protruded from its back, and long, slender arms and legs protruded
from its rounded, fleshy body. It glowered at Zoey with four large, red eyes.
It opened its maw as it wailed and revealed rows of jagged, glass-sharp teeth. It
was about to slice her to pieces.

Zoey recognized the creature as the one she had seen the night
before. Somehow it had used foster mother number 28’s body as a host, like a
giant parasite.

“What’s happening to her?” whimpered Thomas, his blue eyes wide with
fear. “She’s acting crazy, should we call 911? Maybe she needs a doctor?”

Zoey knew that
normal
children couldn’t see the horrors that she saw. They didn’t see or smell the repugnant
creature that stood in the kitchen—they only saw their foster mother, mad with
hatred, like a deranged serial killer.

Zoey grabbed the edges of the table.

“Guys, you need to get out of here right now! Do as I say! Go back
upstairs and lock your doors. Do it now!”

The monster cackled in laughter and lunged at her.

“RUN!”

In a flash, Zoey threw the kitchen table onto the creature, pinning
it against the counter for a few seconds. She leaped sideways and ran to her
backpack. Isabelle, Thomas and Andy disappeared up the stairs in a mad panic.

With a crack like thunder, the monster lashed out and split the
table into an explosion of splintered wood.

Zoey turned with a salt bag in her hand and gripped it tightly.

“I’m going to kill you,
Agent
,”
the demon snarled.

Drools of acid-spit burned the floor beneath her.

“I’m going to rip your heart out and eat it!”

The creature soared through the air directly at Zoey.

But Zoey ripped open the bag and showered the demon with salt.

The salt hit the creature in an explosion of white dust. It wailed and
thrashed around the kitchen, crashing into the cabinets and appliances. Steam rose
off the monster’s body, and the air smelled of putrid burned flesh.

Zoey gagged as the vapors burned her eyes.

The creature stopped thrashing and turned its red, accusing eyes
back on her. It came at her again.

But Zoey was ready. She threw another volley of salt at the demon’s
head.

It stopped in midair and crashed onto the floor in convulsions. Black
boils burst on its body, and a nasty secretion oozed onto the floor. Finally the
demon exploded into black ash, leaving nothing but the smell of sulfur and a
dying screech that rang in Zoey’s ears.

She wiped the last of the vapors from her eyes and brushed her shoe
against the black ashes to make sure the creature had been utterly destroyed. Her
foster mother’s skin had dissolved into nothing more than a puddle of water.

Why had the creature called her an
agent
? And what the heck was the
Nexus
? She didn’t have any answers.

“Zoey?” Thomas poked his head down from up the staircase, and his
mouth fell open at the scene below.

“What happened to the kitchen? Where’s the foster mother? Who’s
going to make us supper now?” Isabelle and Andy peered out behind him, using
him as a human shield.

Zoey wiped the salt from her hands on her jeans.

“She…she wasn’t herself. And now she’s gone, and she won’t be back.
You need to pack your things and call the emergency foster number on the fridge.
They’ll send someone to pick you up. Isabelle, you’re the oldest, so you should
do it.”

Isabelle stood up behind Thomas. “But why did she attack you? Why
would she do that? It’s like she wanted to kill you or something?”

Isabelle wiped her runny nose on her sleeve. Her eyes were red.

Zoey shrugged. They would think she was mad if she told them the truth.
“Sometimes grownups go crazy. I don’t know. Listen, I need to go and figure out
some stuff. Just call the number and sit tight, they’ll send someone; I promise.”

She packed the rest of the salt into her backpack, swung it over her
shoulders and started for the front door.

“Wait!” screamed Isabelle. “Don’t leave us, please! What if she
comes back?”

Zoey stopped in front of the door, but she didn’t turn around. She
stood there for a moment before answering. “She’ll never come back. Everything
is fine now—don’t worry. Just call the number and don’t try to follow me.”

And she added in a low voice. “Death and monsters follow me.”

Zoey didn’t wait to hear Isabelle’s answer. She pulled open the
front door and raced out into the street.

There must be a reason she could see monsters when the rest of the
world was blind to them. And she was determined to find out why. She needed to go
back to the library and use the Internet. There must be something about the
Nexus
online—there had to be.

The local library loomed over the other buildings like a concrete mountain.
A large sign carved into the stone read “Toronto Public Library, Gladstone/Bloor
Branch
.
”
Soft, yellow light poured out from the rows of windows, and Zoey
could see shadows of people moving inside.

Doing her best to avoid landing in puddles, she crossed the street
in a dash. It was deserted except for an elderly woman with a yellow umbrella. A
taxi rushed past her and soaked her with water.

“Hey!” Zoey screamed, outraged. It would take forever to get dry now.
Water seeped into her shoes as she rushed by the old lady.

She heard a grunt, and it didn’t sound human.

Zoey skidded to a stop and whirled around. The old woman shuffled
forward in the rain. Where had the noise come from? Thinking it was probably
the old woman clearing her throat, she turned and started again towards the
library. As she quickened her pace, she felt goose bumps again—her creeps.

A screech echoed behind her. Then she heard a flap of wings, and a
spine-chilling moan.

With her heart in her throat, she stopped and turned.

Something landed behind the elderly woman. It was the size of a horse
and looked like a gargoyle from a medieval castle. It had a human shape with scaly,
black, oily skin and long, clawed fingers and toes. Large membranous wings
stretched out behind it and cast a dark shadow over the woman. Spikes protruded
from its back, and a long, barbed tail lashed threateningly. It had horns like
a bull’s, and a large mouth full of needlelike teeth. But it was the face that
was most unsettling—the creature had no eyes.

Zoey’s pulsed raced.

The old woman couldn’t see it. She stopped walking and stood staring
ahead with a confused expression on her face. Her umbrella fell from her hand. The
demon spread its wings and opened its mouth. A brilliant white mist flowed out from
the woman like a transparent veil and was sucked directly into the creature’s maw.
The woman’s skin turned gray, and she started to tremble uncontrollably. The
creature was sucking the life force out of her.

A mixture of fear and hatred surged through Zoey as she stared at the
eight-foot-tall monster. The old lady’s eyes rolled back into her head. She was
going to die.

“Stop!” Zoey’s voice reverberated in the street louder than she had
expected and sounded more confident than she felt. Her mouth was dry with fear.

“Let go of her! You’re killing her!”

It worked. The demon let the old woman go.

She slumped to the ground on her knees, her life holding on by a
thread.

The creature turned its lifeless face towards Zoey.

Its tail lashed out behind it, and Zoey felt its hunger, like a dog
drooling over a treat. It lifted its head in the air as though it was searching
for a scent. It glanced down at the old woman one more time, and then crept
towards Zoey, as though it were choosing the better prey.

Zoey gagged on its pungent stench. The air had turned foul, like
sewer gas.

Adrenaline pumped through her veins. She planted her feet firmly, reached
inside her backpack, and threw a handful of salt at the advancing creature.

The white crystals showered the beast like a heavy fall of snow. It
stopped, surprised, shook itself, and then kept coming.

A little cry escaped Zoey’s lips. The salt had no effect.

With a beat of its wings, the demon soared through the air and came directly
at her.

Z
oey grabbed her backpack and
ran. The drumming of her heart in her ears drowned any other sounds. It felt
almost like a dream; it had to be a dream. The winged demon was going to tear
her to shreds.

She could hear the flap of the demon’s great wings like the wind in the
sails of a great ship. She could feel
its
warm breath
on the back of her neck. Why hadn’t the salt worked? It had
always
worked before! Any second now the
demon would rip off her head with a swing of its massive talons, and she would
be a headless running chicken.

But she wasn’t ready to die. Not today.

Running full speed, fueled by desperation and fear, she tore down
the street, pushing her legs with every ounce of adrenaline she could muster. The
library building disappeared behind her. She ran until every step made her
wince, and her legs screamed at her to stop. She became a running machine.

An ear-splitting shriek cracked the air—it was laughing at her. The air
from its wing beats pushed aside the rain, and its rasping breath grew louder. She
felt a tug on her backpack and pulled a sharp turn to the right. The creature’s
hold on her released.

She bolted a few paces straight, and then she took a sharp left.
Blinking to see through the rain, she sprinted down the street eluding the
demon’s grasp with each
zig
and
zag
.
Although the demon had no eyes, it was still on her like a giant angry wasp—Dracula’s
dino
-bat was using echolocation to detect her!

Her legs burned as she ran. Every breath was like swallowing buckets
of acid into her lungs. Her throat was raw. She couldn’t keep on like this. She
would have to face the demon and fight eventually, but with what? Not knowing
how clever the demon was, she couldn’t risk thinking it was stupid. She needed
to figure out a plan to stay alive.

Another piercing screech echoed in the street behind her. Cars raced
passed her, honking angrily, missing her by a millimeter. She turned right onto
a narrow lane to get out of the traffic and sprinted down the next block.

She could see a large gray stone building up ahead. Its boarded up
windows were decorated with primitive graffiti. The words
Cinema
Déjà View
were
etched in black above the double red doors. A crooked We’re Closed sign was
nailed to them. She made a beeline for the front doors.

She felt a gust of wind on the back of her head and heard the giant
flap of wings very close behind her. And at the last minute, she faked to the
left and tore towards the right side of the building. A crash thundered behind her,
then an angry wail.

Without stopping, Zoey ran down the side of the theatre, through a
small courtyard, and slipped inside a side emergency door. In complete darkness
she ran blindly down a hallway that branched out into more corridors. Her foot
caught on something, and she tumbled down a flight of steps. She pushed herself
up, but excruciating pain like liquid fire burned on the inside of her right
ankle bone. She cursed her own stupidity.

As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she saw that she stood in the
main seating area of the theatre. The only source of light came from the
antique fixtures that lined the walls and cast an eerie gloom around the rows
of seats. Her skin tingled—the demon was near. She resisted the urge to cry out
because of the pain in her ankle, clenched her jaw, and bounded down the
remaining steps. She grabbed at the seats to keep the weight off her ankle and
moved towards the stage—

The theatre shook as though a bomb had detonated at the front
entrance. Glass shattered and fragments of the front doors exploded through the
main lobby and landed in the aisles. Debris rained down from the ceiling. Zoey
coughed blindly in the dust and mold, but she finally reached the bottom of the
stairs and hauled herself up the platform. Bent double from the cramp in her
side and the pain of her ankle, she took a moment to catch her breath.

The demon soared from the lobby with another terrible screech. Its
bat-like wings flapped in cadence, sending dust all around as it landed gracefully
on the opposite side of the stage. It bared its gnarled teeth in an ugly smile

Zoey watched transfixed. The creature was more hideous up close,
although it looked almost human when it folded its wings. It smelled of decay.

It cocked its head to the side and spoke in a rasping voice, “You
cannot hide from me,
Agent.
Your stink
is the smell of arrogance and deception. It follows you wherever you go. You
reek of it.”

“Here we go again with the agent thing,” said Zoey, her throat was
raw and dry, but she was glad her voice was even. “And by the way,
I’m
not the one who smells.”

The creature watched her with its eyeless face.

“
This
world does not
belong to you. You are fools in feeble bodies. You are easily killed. My
mission is to kill as many agents as I can, and I am going to continue with
you.”

“Well, I’m not so
easily
killed,” said Zoey. “I’m a lot stronger than I look.”

The demon shook its sightless head.

“Your lot always makes it so difficult for the rest of us. This
world will be better without you agents—you
pollute
it.”

Zoey adjusted her weight on her left leg and felt the pain lessen on
her right ankle. She might be able to make a run for it after all—but she needed
a diversion for a head start—otherwise she was demon-kibble.

The demon’s tail slashed eagerly behind it.

“I will enjoy killing you. I will drink your blood simply for
pleasure. I enjoy a hot drink. But we demons do not simply feast on the mere
blood of humans—your essence is what we crave. Your life force empowers us and perpetuates
our stay in this world. The more we feed—the more powerful we become—and we
will soon kill every last agent and make this world our own.”

“I doubt it.” Zoey frowned.

“I’ve never seen a monster like you before. What are you anyway?
Some sort of dragon experiment gone wrong?”

She needed to keep the creature talking to give her time to plan her
escape. She couldn’t fight it—the only thing she could do was limp
really
fast. But where? Light seeped in from
behind the lobby. It was one way out. Could she make it that far before the
demon tore her to shreds like grated cheese?

“I am a
Duyen
demon,” answered the
creature. “I have existed long before the time of men, when your world was merely
wasteland.”

The demon moved its head from side to side like a snake. “You are
different from the other agents, you seem…unprepared.”

Zoey faked a laugh. “Well, it’s been a crazy day you know—papers to
file—bad guys to catch.” She stole a look behind the creature, searching for a
weapon or anything she could use to fight with, but she couldn’t see anything
useful.

“Has your team abandoned you?” asked the demon. “Where are the rest
of your despicable agent friends?”

A wicked smile spread across the blind creature’s face. “Unless you are
here all on your own. I can smell your fear. I can almost
taste
it—you
are
on your
own, aren’t you?”

Zoey pressed her mouth shut. The situation was getting worse by the
second.

“Now why would they leave such an innocent little girl on her own?” said
the demon leaning forward. “How very curious…”

“Maybe I’m suicidal,” said Zoey. She took a step back.

The creature laughed. “No matter, I’m going to kill you now, little
girl. Agent or not, it’s your time to die!” The demon spread its wings and
leaped forward—

A blinding blast of orange light shot through the air like a firework
and hit the creature in the chest. The demon shot backwards as if it had been hit
by cannon fire. It wailed as it fell to the ground in a ball of fire, flailing
its limbs in a desperate attempt to extinguish the flames.

A teenage boy and two men raced towards the flaming creature. They
hauled themselves easily up onto the platform. The teen had a V-shaped weapon
in his hand that looked like a modernized slingshot. The two men held red
weapons that looked like jumbo-sized water cannons with glass barrels on the
top. Orange liquid fire glowed from inside the glass. They ignored her
completely and trained their weapons on the demon as they approached it
carefully.

“You’re in violation of the Mystic Treaty,” said one of the men, with
a business-like expression on his face. He looked like a young bank manager on
casual Friday, not overly handsome, with trimmed brown hair, polished black
boots, jeans, and a smart-looking black leather jacket.

“Article number 6-A,” he continued, “trespassing through another
dimension without authorization from the agency and the killing of humans is
punishable by death. You are well aware of the laws,
Duyen
.”

Black steam rose from the demon’s scorched body, smothering the
theatre with a rotten flesh stench.

“Your laws, not mine!” it growled. “I care nothing for your treaty,
Agent
. Contracts conceived by humans
mean nothing to us. I will rip the flesh off your bones!”

With a flap of its singed wings the demon shot up in the air and
came down at the man with destructive force.

“Now why did it have to say that?” said the same man with a smug
expression. “Agent Lee, some assistance.”

Just as the creature was about to rip out the man’s throat with its
talons, both men raised their weapons and fired at the same time. Two balls of
liquid fire engulfed the winged demon. It hit the wall and slumped to the
ground, howling in pain and anger. Within seconds the fire consumed it like a
piece of paper. The demon disappeared and ashes fell to the ground like
blackened snow. The
Duyen
demon was no more.

Zoey was mesmerized. The man called Agent Lee slipped his gun back
into a fold in his long black trench coat. With his shades, he looked ready to
walk the runway for the new clothing line of FBI outfits. He was younger than
the other man and appeared to be Asian. Although he was a few inches shorter
than the other man, Zoey saw that he compensated with an over-the-top spiked
black hairdo.

“You know, Barnes, we should put a tighter leash on the
Duyens
,” said Agent Lee. “That’s three this week. You’d
think they’d get the idea and stay in the Nexus. Oh great, now my coat’s all
dirty. I just had it dry cleaned!” He started to pat down the dust on his
trench coat and looked utterly appalled at his appearance.

Zoey wasn’t sure whether to laugh or stay quiet. Who were these
people? But she was glad about one thing—they had given her answers to one of
her questions—the Nexus was a place where the monsters came from.

“I’m just glad we fried it before it killed anyone else,” said the
man called Barnes. “Hey, anyone in the mood for fried chicken…?”

“What about her?” said the teenage boy.

Zoey began to blush.

He was tall for his age and athletic, like a hockey player. He wore
a plain white T-shirt under a khaki jacket and jeans. His thick, brown hair framed
his perfectly chiseled face. His olive complexion and high cheekbones implied
that his ancestors could have been native Indian. His dark, almond-shaped eyes
bore into hers, and she quickly looked away. There was something unsettling
about his eyes.

“I’m on it.” Barnes pulled out a cell phone from his jacket. “I’m
calling in the Erasers—”

“No, wait!” urged the teen. He stood facing Zoey with a puzzled
expression on his face. “She was talking to it just before we got here. I’m
positive that she could
see
it.”

Zoey’s heart was in her throat. The rotten smell still lingered, and
every breath was like sucking in toxic waste. The room began to spin, and she
strained to keep still. She couldn’t faint now, in front of these people, and
worse—she didn’t want anything called
Erasers
near her either.

“She did, did she? Well, that’s
gotta
be a
first,” said Barnes as he dropped his phone in his jacket pocket.

The three strangers watched Zoey intensely without speaking for a
moment. A cold sweat dripped down her back. It was the first time in her life
she had met other people who shared her ability. They could see monsters, too,
just like her. She had waited and prayed for this moment all her life, but it
wasn’t happening quite as she had imagined. They didn’t seem very
happy
about it. In fact, they seemed a
little unnerved that she could see monsters, too. Was this a mistake? What were
they going to do with her? Should she run?

Finally, Barnes moved towards her until he was looming over her like
a teacher about to reprimand her. “You there, kid, what was it that you saw?
Did you
see
anything unusual?”

Zoey fidgeted on the spot. “Apart from seeing you people burn a
giant bat to smithereens—I guess nothing that unusual. Of course I could
see
it. It was standing right in front
of me. It was about to kill me, and then you three showed up.”

The boy gave the other two
a
told-you-so
look. But their shared
expressions were grim, not at all the joyous reception she had imaged. Zoey had
been waiting all her life to meet people like her. She wasn’t alone. But their
third degree was making her nervous. Maybe they were going to vaporize her like
they did the demon.

“Well, slap me silly and call me Susan! We’ve got ourselves a
Drifter
. I’m Agent Barnes,” he said and
then pointed to the others, “this is Agent Lee, and our young fellow here is
Tristan. We’ve been tracking your so-called giant bat for two days. It killed
three people.”