The Witch Hunter's Gauntlet (15 page)

“Very
,” Sam said.

“Then maybe we should find a place to hide.”

“Help me hold this door,” Lucas said, bracing his back against the door.

Crash.

One of the vampires leapt through a window.

“Hello, kiddies,” she said.

Sam, Zoey, and Lucas screamed in unison as they ran down the hall. As they ran, it occurred to Sam that the vampires were only after her. Maybe if she stopped running, Zoey and Lucas could get away.

A
door swung open ahead of them.

“This way,” Doc Frost called from the door.

The three of them ran inside, and Doc Frost slammed the door closed.

Doc Frost had a very impressive laboratory. Sam couldn’t even guess what all the machines in here did, but the sheer number of them was impressive enough. But what really stood out was the car frame in the middle of all the machines. It looked
like a car with the doors and hood and trunk and several other things missing, including the wheels. But where the tires should be were four hoverboards, and in place of the engine was a portable generator lying on its side.

“Vampires!”
Zoey yelled between huge gulps of air.

“I see. That would explain all the screaming.” Doc Frost stroked his chin.

“No, there really are vampires,” Sam said.

“Cheerleader vampires,” Lucas added.

“Oh, I believe you,” Doc Frost said. “I just don’t have anything good for dealing with vampires.”

Thump. Thump. Thump.

Someone was pounding on the double doors. Pounding so hard the metal doors were beginning to buckle.

“Right.”
The gears were starting to spin in Doc Frost’s head. “Lucas, grab that Perma-glue gun.”

Lucas turned around. Behind him was a cart with a large oddly designed gun on top. Instead of a trigger it had a long metal plunger in the back.

“Now we’re talking,” Lucas said, holding the gun like some action hero.

“Quickly boy.”
Doc Frost waved him over to the door.

“Why does the boy get the gun?” Zoey asked.

Suddenly a fist punched through the gap between the doors.

“Never mind, just
do it,” Zoey said, ducking behind a workbench.

Lucas pointed the gun at the doors and shoved the plunger all the way in. A thick gray goop shot out of the gun all over the floor.

“What the heck,” he said, wiping the goop off the end of the gun.

“No!” Doc Frost rushed towards him. “Don’t touch it.”

Lucas looked up in bewilderment as he tried to wipe the goop off onto his pants.

But before Doc Frost could reach him
, the doors burst open. Two cheerleaders strutted into the lab with big fangy smiles on their faces.

“Party time.”

Shuft.

An arrow poked through the nearest vampires’ top, next to the big yellow M, and right through the heart.
She crumbled into a pile of dust in a cheerleader uniform.

“
Raaaah,” the other cheerleader hissed as she spun around.

“Two down, one to go.” A slim figure all in black and carrying a crossbow appeared in the hallway. She looked like a ninja assassin right out of a Japanese cartoon.

“Kinda skinny, aren’t ya?” the vampire sneered.

With one high kick the crossbow flew out of the black figure’s hand and skittered across the tiled floor. The ninja assassin, or whatever, dropped to the floor and swept the vampire’s legs in one quick spin. She then pounced on the cheerleader
, pinning the snarling girl to the floor.

“You would have
made a pretty good cheerleader,” the vampire said, snapping her jaws. “And you’ll make a great vampire.”

“Fat chance.”
The ninja pulled a wooden stake from some hidden pocket and drove it straight through the vampire’s heart. She rose from the floor in a cloud of vampire dust.

“Very well done
, Natasha,” Doc Frost said.

“Thanks, Doctor Frost,” Tasha said
, unwrapping her ninja mask.

“Tasha?
” Sam and Zoey asked in unison.

“Hey.” She waved with one hand while
brushing the dust off her ninja suit with the other.

“There were three of them,”
Zoey pointed out.

“I got the third one outside,” Tasha said matter-of-factly. “We should go get the uniform before someone notices it.”

“Uh, hello. Little problem here,” Lucas said. His hands were stuck to his pants.

Doc Frost chuckled deeply. “That’s Perma-glue.
Dries in seconds. Strong as steel.”

“What?” Lucas frantically tried to tug his hands free.

“Don’t worry. I have a solvent back at the house that’ll dissolve it right off. That’s why we could never sell the stuff. No one wants a construction adhesive that can turn to soup if someone spills the wrong chemical on it.”

Everyone crammed into Doc Frost’s tiny car. Sam was a bit leery of the whole deal. What kind of nerd visits a teacher at their house?

But on the other hand, everyone whose opinion mattered to her was going with her.

Doc Frost’s house was oddly normal. It was a conventional square two-story house in a quiet, sleepy neighborhood so far away from Miller’s Grove Academy that Sam could almost believe that she was in a normal town somewhere. Then again, a lot of horror movies took place in quiet, normal houses in small towns, so it wasn’t that reassuring.

Doc Frost pulled his car into the garage
. It barely fit between the tarp-covered car on one side and the pile of old computers next to the door.

Two walls of the garage were nothing but shelf after shelf of machinery, random loose wires, and tools. There was a dusty plastic
Santa with eight reindeer parked in a corner next to two boxes labeled LIGHTS and a dingy old lawn mower with solar panels attached to the handle.

“What’s under the tarp?” Zoey asked.

“My candy apple red ’66 Mustang convertible. My own personal pet project,” Doc Frost said.

“Hello! Still glued here,” Lucas whined from the back seat.

“Right, yes. Let’s go save Lucas’ hands,” Doc Frost said, stepping out of the car. “The kitchen is right inside. You girls help yourselves to the refrigerator.”

As far as Sam could tell, aside from the addition of a microwave, the kitchen hadn’t changed since the 1950s. She could only imagine what the food in that ancient refrigerator was like.

“Okay, the solvent is in the basement. We’re going to take this one step at a time.”

Lucas had
to stoop to walk down the stairs with his hands glued to his thighs. Doc Frost went first just in case he fell. “Right foot down. Good. Now the left one.”

As soon as they disappeared down the stairs
, Tasha threw open the refrigerator.

“Let
’s see what we got here. Orange juice, chocolate milk, half a watermelon, uh, mystery stew-“

“What is with you?” Zoey more shouted than asked.

“I’m hungry. Fighting vampires always makes me hungry. What’s the big deal?” Tasha said as she rummaged through the crisper.

“That. That’s it exactly. Why aren’t you freaked out by the vampires? A normal person would be freaked out by vampires.
I’m freaked out by the vampires.”

“I grew up with vampires. Well, fighting vampires
, actually. It’s no big deal,” Tasha said peeling the lid off off a yogurt container.

“Anyone know who those girls were?” Sam asked.

“Nope.”

“No.”

They stood there in quiet mourning for the girls they never knew.

Sam knew that it was a big school and
that they were seniors and she was a freshman, so it was only natural that they had never crossed paths before, but she couldn’t help feeling terrible that she didn’t know anything about them.

“Are they connected to that Cervantes guy?” Zoey asked breaking the silence.

Tasha thrust the spoon back into her yogurt. “How do you know about Prince Cervantes?”

“Sam.”

Way to rat me out, Zoey
, Sam thought loudly.

“Sam
, are you going around telling everybody about this?” Tasha asked angrily.

“No. I didn’t tell you
, did I? How do you know about him anyway?”

“I told you. I grew up with all of this. The
Beaumonts have been monster hunters for generations,” Tasha said matter-of-factly.

“Monsters?
Like what?” Zoey asked.

“Oh, you
know werewolves, zombies, mummies, wendigoes, yetis, all the things that go bump in the night. But mostly vampires. My parents were friends with Sam’s parents, so they told me to watch out for her.”

“You told me your parents owned a lumberyard,” Sam said. Tasha was the first friend
she had made at Miller’s Grove. How much of that was based on a lie?

“They do,” Tasha said
, gesturing with her spoon. “It’s a brilliant cover, don’t you think?”

“I guess.”

It
actually was a brilliant cover for a bunch of vampire hunters. But Sam was still mad.

Zoey clapped her hands in triumph. “That’s why you’re always so tired. You stay up all night hunting vampires. So, are you like Sam’s bodyguard?”

Tasha suddenly found something very interesting in her yogurt.

“Sort of.”

“What?” Sam screamed.

“Yeah,” Tasha said sheepishly. She studied the piece of mystery fruit on her spoon.

“Were you ever going to tell me?”

“I wasn’t supposed to.”

The muscles in Sam’s arms and legs tightened with anger. She could probably bend steel in her bare hands right now. She almost wished she had a metal bar to practice on. Tasha must have picked up on this, because she took a small step backward and kept a watchful eye on Sam’s hands.

Zoey
stood there looking from Sam to Tasha and back to Sam. She could obviously feel the tension in the room. Fortunately, Doc Frost came clomping back up the stairs.

“He’ll be all right.
Turns out the solvent is a little stronger than I thought. It’s safe on skin, but it dissolves pants. I’m going to go see if I have anything that might fit him.” Judging by the way he smiled as he left the kitchen Doc Frost found the situation just as funny as Sam would have if she wasn’t so mad.

“Aw, poor Lucas.”
Tasha said.

“I know,” Sam said. Lucas was definitely getting the worst of it today.

“Maybe we should get him something to eat too,” Zoey said, opening the refrigerator again.

“I’d like a turkey sandwich if he’s got the stuff.”

Zoey literally jumped and quickly hid behind the refrigerator door. But after the night they had just had, Sam couldn’t blame her.

“Stop sneaking around,” Zoey sa
id between clenched teeth to Lucas’s head, which had appeared at the bottom of the basement door.

“Sorry,” Lucas said. “But you have to come down here.”

“Yeah, not happening, Captain No-Pants,” Tasha said.

“I’m serious,” he said in a very serious tone. “And I still have most of my pants.”

“Maybe Sam should check it out,” Zoey said.

“Yeah, you go check it out,” Tasha agreed.

“Will somebody please come down here?” Lucas asked in a highly agitated voice.

Tasha and
Zoey gave Sam encouraging nods.

“Fine,” Sam said. “But this better be worth it.”

“It is,” Lucas said, heading back down the stairs. “Doc Frost has got some seriously freaky stuff down here.”

Sam slowly crept down the stairs. “Freakier than everything else we saw today? I mean, he’s a little weird, but he’s not some spooky mad scientist.”

“Oh yeah?” Lucas asked when she reached the bottom.

The basement was fashioned into some sort of laboratory or workshop right out of an old science fiction movie. There were ray guns and robotic arms on the walls. Vials of colorful li
quids bubbled and steamed on metal tables.

There was even a bulky
1950s-style robot in the middle of the room. Sam was suddenly flooded with memories of her grandfather’s house. He always had the coolest, weirdest stuff.

And then she saw Lucas’ pants. She couldn’t hold back the laughter. There were two large holes in the thigh area where his hands had been stuck. She could see his pockets and the skin underneath. He just looked at her sternly until she stopped laughing, which took a monumental effort on her part.

“This is serious. The hoverboard thing is cool, but these things look deadly.” He picked up a gun that definitely gave off a strong ‘death ray’ vibe.

“Be careful, you don’t know what that does,” Sam said.

He pulled the trigger.

A blue beam shot
out of the gun and coated the basement ceiling with ice.

“Turn it off,” Sam yelled. Doc Frost was definitely going to realize they were messing around with his gear if everything was covered in ice.

“Freeze ray. Awesome.” He put the ray gun down.

“Stop messing with this stuff,” Sam said.

“Okay, but look at this.”

Luca
s waved her over to an old rolltop desk stuck in the corner of the basement next to the washer and dryer. It was covered in old papers. Some of them were so old they had turned yellow and began to curl.

“Check it out
,” Lucas said, handing her a sketch.

The drawing was similar to those used by fashion designers. There was a generic male figure in different poses. A really ridiculous yellow and blue skintight costume was drawn on the figure.

The costume had a gun belt.

“Now look at this,” Lucas said in a darker tone.

He handed her a FBI wanted poster of a man who easily could have been a younger Doc Frost in the same yellow and blue outfit as the sketch, except this costume included a mask.

“This can’t be right,” she said.

Lucas snatched the paper back from Sam and read out loud, “Elijah Frost, alias Freezerburn, wanted on charges of bank robbery, assault with a deadly weapon, resisting arrest-”

“Stop.”
Sam didn’t want to hear any more.

“We have to get out of here,” Lucas said. “Maybe tell Dean Futuro.”

Sam would have bet a million dollars that Dean Futuro already knew all about Doc Frost’s past.

“Okay, let
’s just get back upstairs. Put that back where you found it.”

Lucas set the papers back down
on the desk and closed the rolltop. Sam slowly backed away from the desk with her hands at her sides to make sure she didn’t accidentally touch anything. Her back brushed against something hard and cold. She knew instantly that she had backed into the robot.

Now just step aw
ay before something bad happens.

“Kill all humans. Kill all humans,” said a mechanical voice behind her ear.

Sam wasn’t the slightest bit surprised.

“Massively uncool,” Lucas said. He grabbed her hand and pulled her away from the robot.

She spun as he pulled her to him. The robot’s head twisted around to look at them with its red glowing eyes.

“Kill all humans.”

“Help!” Sam screamed at the top of her lungs.

The robot reached for them with one of its metal claws.

Lucas threw a pen at it. The pen bounced off harmlessly.

“Good going,” Sam whispered.

Lucas grabbed the closest ray gun off the wall. He aimed at the robot and fired. A puff of green gas wafted out of the gun.

“What was that?”

“I don’t know.”

“Help!”
Sam shouted again.

T
he robot took a step closer to them. It was a big clunky robot that rattled and whirred as it moved, but Sam figured it was also probably pretty strong.

“Split up,” Lucas suggested. “I’ll go this way, you head for the stairs.”

Lucas ran past the robot just out of reach of its claw.

“Lucas, you’re crazy.”

“Go up the stairs. Get Doc Frost.”

“It’s still watching me.”

Lucas frantically threw random bits of machinery at the robot. Slowly the robot’s head rotated away from Sam and looked at Lucas.

“That’s right, come and get me.”

The robot’s entire body swiveled to face Lucas.

Sam noticed that Lucas had pi
nned himself into a corner. With the robot’s back turned, she slowly crept up behind it and snatched two guns off the nearby table. She stuffed the smaller one in her pocket. The big one had a crank on one side instead of a trigger. She pumped the crank as fast as she could. Instantly a pair of blades popped out of the end and began spinning like a fan.

Somehow the fan was spinning a thousand times faster than she was cranking. She did her best to aim at the robot, eve
n though she didn’t see how a strong gust of wind was going to stop such a heavy robot, but the force of the wind became too much for her, and she was thrown backward against the wall. She dropped the gun to the floor, where the blades chewed into the concrete for a few seconds before running out of steam.

“Oh, I’ve got a good one,” Lucas yelled.

He was pointing a gun similar to the ice ray at the robot, but this one fired a red beam into the robot’s face, melting it into a big sloppy frown. But the robot didn’t seem to care about its melting face. It kept right on lurching its way toward Lucas.

Sam pulled the other gun out of her pocket. It didn’t look like much. It had a skinny handle and two long thin prongs at the firing end.