Story Thieves (22 page)

A moaning Science Soldier zombie grabbed for him, and he yanked away, firing his ray gun at the creature. Holes exploded in the robot's chest, but it didn't stop coming until Charm dropped a computer monitor on its head.

“Watch out!” he shouted at her as the First Magician turned to them again. Owen aimed his ray gun at the zombie, but Charm pushed the gun off course before he could fire.

“Don't kill him! We need to know where the last key is!”

“I don't care!”
Owen shouted at her. “That almost got us killed in the Original Computer, and it's
definitely
going to kill us here!”

Charm just stared at him. “Wait. It's the same trap. The same one, Kiel! Someone set these up to protect the Seventh Key. The viruses were the science version, and this is the magic version!”

“So?”

“Magic saved us last time, so maybe science will work here.” She felt around in her pocket and pulled out a tiny field medical pack, then tensed, like she was looking for an opening to move.

“What are you
doing 
?” Owen shouted at her, shooting his ray gun at the robot zombies behind her.

“Fixing this,” Charm said, pulling open the med pack with her teeth and shaking something out into her remaining hand.

The zombie blasted green magic at them, and this time Owen couldn't move fast enough. The blast hit the spell book under his arm, and the book began to shudder and shake. He quickly dropped it to the ground, where it began to drool and slobber, using its cover to drag itself over toward Charm.

“AAH!” he shouted, shooting the spell book over and over until it stopped.

Well. That was it for any more spells, then.

“I'm going,” Charm said, jumping past him and the now-dead spell book, weaving in and out so the First Magician zombie couldn't get a fix on her. “Cover me!”

Owen just gritted his teeth, his eyes everywhere at once. The
zombie robots were about to overwhelm him from behind, but every time he tried to shoot them, the First Magician almost zombified him. And now Charm was actually running straight at the undead creature? With a first aid pack?

The First Magician raised his hands together, forming an enormous ball of the same green magic just as Charm reached him. “Hope this works,” she muttered, then smacked the item from the med kit right into the zombie's chest. It stuck there, a white square of plastic with a big red button on its front. Charm slammed her hand on the button, then jumped away.

Thousands of volts of electricity jolted into the zombie's chest, and the green ball of magic went careening off into the back of the cave somewhere. The First Magician toppled over, still shaking and shuddering, while Charm just grabbed her ray gun with her now-free hand and aimed it at him warily.

The shaking stopped, and the magician didn't move again.

“I thought you said
not
to kill him!” Owen shouted at her, finally able to turn his attention to the shambling robotic zombie horde shuffling toward them. For every robot he shot, two more zombies rose from the ground, replacing their fallen comrade.

Charm kicked the First Magician. “Huh. Thought that'd work.”

“Work? Shooting him full of electricity?”

Charm stared to reply, then leaped backward with ray gun raised as the First Magician began to cough, then slowly pushed himself up to a sitting position. “Ah,” he said in a dusty and rarely used voice. “Guests!”

“
Shoot him
, he's awake!” Owen shouted, and turned his ray gun on the First Magician.

“Don't!” Charm shouted. “He's going to be okay. I restarted his heart.”

“You
what
?!”

“Ah, the robots,” the First Magician said with a frown. “I'd forgotten about them. I never did like robots much. What say we do away with them?” He gestured, and green magical energy swept out, playing like lightning through each of the zombie Science Soldiers. As the magic touched them, the robots immediately dropped to the ground, unmoving.

Owen looked at Charm, who grinned for maybe the first time ever. “Science wins again,” she said.

“Excuse me for a moment,” the First Magician said, waving
his hand over himself. “I just want to tidy up a bit.” A long white coat grew out from his clothes like a living thing, covering his tattered outfit and decaying skin. Glasses pushed up from his face, and sensible brown shoes from his feet, along with a pair of brown pants. All in all, he looked like nothing more than—

“A scientist?” Owen blurted out.

The First Magician raised an eyebrow. “Well, of course I was. Once. But that's not important right now. You're probably here to ask me about the Seventh Key, I would suppose?”

“I'm Charm Mentum of Quanterium, and this is Kiel Gnomenfoot of Magisteria,” Charm said. “And yes, we're looking for the Seventh Key. The current leader of Quanterium, Dr. Verity, is about to destroy Magisteria with an army from alternate dimensions. We need your help to open the Vault of Containment so we can use the Source of Magic against him.”

The zombie nodded. “Ah, I can see why you would need the Seventh Key, then. Are the two planets still really at war? Seems like yesterday we invented magic, left Quanterium, and formed Magisteria, just to stave off that kind of problem.”

“Invent magic?” Charm asked.

“Form a planet?” Owen said.

The First Magician started to say something, then seemed to almost faint. He grabbed for the circuit-covered throne, while Owen rushed forward to help him. “I don't have much time,” the zombie said. “I used the science in this cave to keep my body preserved, in the hopes that someone would come along and use the throne's circuitry to reanimate me.” He looked from Owen to Charm. “I suppose you two found a different way.”

“Kiel's fault,” Charm said. Kiel gave her an indignant glare.

“But I think we've reached even the limits of science,” the Magician continued. “This body is just too old. As for the key, I must pass my secret along before I sleep once more, if the danger is so great. Everything was arranged to ensure that neither Quanterian nor Magisterian could ever find all seven keys without the other's help.” He smiled gently at Charm and Owen. “You two seem to be exactly what I'd hoped for.”

Charm snorted. Owen just shook his head. The First Magician probably wouldn't be thrilled to learn that one of them wasn't a magic-user so much as a kid from the real world who'd been magically disguised to
look
like one.

“The Seventh Key doesn't actually exist, not anymore,” the Magician said, then keeled over in pain. When Charm tried to
help him, he shook his head. “We destroyed it after locking the vault. But it
can
be re-created. The magic of the vault ensures that only a person with a truly selfless intent may open it, and that's where the final key comes in. Re-forming the key requires a heart that wishes to open the door for others, not for him or herself.”

“That's a little metaphoric,” Charm said, flashing Owen the look that she gave him whenever magic impossibilities came up. “How
exactly
do we remake the key?”

“I just told you,” the First Magician said, then coughed hard. “The heart of a selfless individual. Remove the heart from the body, and the key will emerge from the heart itself.”

“Wait . . . what?” Owen said. “
Actually
remove the heart? Wouldn't that kill the person?”

“Of course,” the First Magician said. “But what selfless person wouldn't be willing to die for their cause?”

Was he
joking
? Heroes in books didn't die! Sometimes they thought they might, and were willing to, but they never actually did. That'd be a horrible ending. There must be some twist here. There had to be!

Charm seemed lost in thought as well, finally turning to Owen. “Actually, that explains some things.”

“Explains?” Owen asked, barely able to concentrate on what she was saying. “It doesn't explain anything!”

“Remember back when we went to the future to find the Second Key?” she said. “Remember how we saw all those historical stories about you dying? They all said you died after losing your heart.” She awkwardly patted him on the shoulder. “We thought that meant you gave up. Guess it wasn't metaphor
there
, either.”

H
appy birthday, Bethany,” her father said, removing his hands from her eyes.

Bethany gasped. “A Pegasus?” She ran toward the pitch-black winged horse with eyes blazing red and hooves sharp as knives. “You got me a Pegasus!”

“Be careful!” her father yelled after her. “Those hooves can cut through steel, and he's a man-eater!”

“I will!” Bethany yelled, then ducked under the creature's snapping jaws as she ran, only to throw her arms around his neck and swing herself up and around onto his back. “No reins?”

“Do you need them?” her father yelled.

“Nope!” she shouted, and nudged the startled Pegasus in the side. “Let's fly, boy!”

The winged horse had never had a rider on its back and didn't exactly know how to react to Bethany being there. First,
he tried bucking her, which didn't so much as budge her. Next, he took off, and tried to fly close enough to trees and underhanging rocks to scrape her right off his back.

“I know all these tricks, boy,” she said, yelling in his ear over the rushing wind. “A centaur taught me everything anyone could ever know about riding horses. But do what you have to. I can wait!”

From the ground her father waved over and over, while her mother stood shaking her head in disappointment. Bethany laughed loudly, knowing that her mother had probably said no to her father getting Bethany a fictional creature for a pet, and that her father had just gone ahead and done it anyway. Sneakily.

As her new Pegasus began to slowly realize that Bethany wasn't going anywhere, and that maybe cooperation might be better, things began to smooth out, and the ride grew a bit less exciting.

That wasn't going to work.

“Yah!” Bethany said, and nudged the creature in the side again. “We're not gonna do boring on our first ride! Let's go find Hercules or something and help him fight monsters!”

“No getting involved in other people's stories!” her mother yelled up from the ground. “I'm tired of having to fix them!”

“I won't!” Bethany lied, then grinned.

As the ground pulled away, Bethany could just barely make out Mount Olympus through the clouds. Lightning played within the city of the gods, and for a moment, she wondered if she could ask Zeus for a lightning bolt, just to borrow.

“Bethany,” whispered a voice, a man's voice.

She glanced around, but saw no one. Was one of the gods speaking to her? Or even better, was her Pegasus telepathic? She'd always wanted to—

“Bethany,” said the voice, stronger this time. It seemed familiar, and yet not one she could place. Where had she heard it?

“Bethany, you need to break out of that story,” said the voice. “This isn't your life.”

“Who is this?” Bethany said, her voice getting carried away by the rushing wind as the Pegasus glided toward Olympus. Lightning began to flash through the clouds as rain whipped against her face.

“Nobody important,” the voice said. “But I know who you are, and I know that all of this is just a story, not your actual life.”

“What . . . what do you mean? Just a story? Of course it is!” She glanced around. This wasn't her life, it was a book of Greek myths. Who
was
this—

“The Magister put you in a story, Bethany,” the voice said. “He had Jonathan Porterhouse write you a new life, a life with the father that you never actually had. You need to let it go and come back to reality.”

“There's no such thing as reality,” Bethany murmured, trying to remember who the Magister or Jonathan Porterhouse were. “That was the first thing my father taught me. The fictional world is just as real—”

“Of course it is,” the voice said. “But this story isn't yours. You need to be living the story you're meant to, not one that the Magister created to make you happy. Leave this behind and come back out to reality.”

The rain and lightning and man-eating Pegasus didn't bother her, but for some reason, the voice's words sent a chill down her back. “No,” she whispered. “I'm not leaving.”

“Bethany!” the voice shouted. “If you don't come out, the Magister will sentence your entire world to live out fictional stories!”

“NO!” she shouted this time. “I have my father back, and
I'm not leaving! This is the life I was supposed to have. This is the life I didn't mess up. I don't care what it is, I'm taking it and you can't make me leave!”

“You're right,” the voice said. “I can't make you. But that's not your father, Bethany. Not the real version. And there are people counting on you. The Magister has Kiel, Bethany. And Owen is still trapped.”

The names formed images in her mind. A boy, a boy who knew magic, and his former master, the Magister. They'd . . . they'd escaped from their book, because of . . . because of Bethany, and a friend of hers. Owen.

OWEN!

The realization almost knocked her right off her horse. How long had she been here? How long had Owen been trapped in the Kiel Gnomenfoot books? And how could she let the Magister run loose in the real world?

“Kiel needs your help,” the voice said. “As does Owen. Come back for them.”

“I . . . I don't know!” she shouted over the wind. The lightning and rain crashed all around her now, and she could barely see. “I need to see my father. I need to . . . I need to say good-bye, just for now. Tell him that I'll come back.”