Soon, everyone was ready. Even Merlin had strapped the pouches to his belt, placing the items he thought he might need the most into his pockets. Then again, with Frank and the rest of the Monster Mob around, with the help of who knows who else, he decided to keep the pebble that would change into a cinder block in his hand, just in case.
A few minutes later they were walking down an alley not far from the house. That was when Frank, Lucas, and Ruth stepped out into the alley.
That didn’t bode well, Merlin thought to himself. There were three people in the Monster Mob. They almost outnumbered the Monster Mob by two to one. They must certainly be confident in themselves to go against those types of odds.
Shirley and Ruth were probably not too badly matched, both being about the same size. Arthur seemed to think he could handle Frank on his own. That left Robert, Peter, and him to deal with Lucas. How in the world could they lose?
Almost immediately, things went haywire. Peter fell to his knees and started groaning, clutching at his stomach. His moans distracted everyone for a moment, which was when the Monster Mob attacked.
Frank strode into the fight with a big metal bat, swinging it at Arthur. Arthur, though surprised, blocked the swing with his sword. Merlin winced, imagining how the sword would be shattered by the bat. Instead, the sword actually chipped the bat instead. Huh?
Ruth sprinted forward, surprisingly fast. In fact, she seemed to move too fast. How did she do that? Maybe the match between Ruth and Shirley wouldn’t be so evenly matched after all. Robert sensed this and moved to help Shirley.
It did appear that Arthur could hold his own against Frank, however. That left him fighting Lucas alone. Oh, that wasn’t good. Lucas didn’t seem to care about their plans though. Instead of trying to fight Merlin, he leaped onto Robert. And it was a leap. Dang! And were his nails just a little too sharp? Was he growling? Uh, not good. Not good at all.
“What?” Merlin blurted out loud as Robert drew his bow back and readied an arrow. Had he gone crazy? Was he actually about to shoot Ruth? Before he could yell at Robert to stop, the arrow had already been released. Merlin closed his eyes, not wanting to see what happened.
Unable to resist, he peeked anyway, only to see an arrow pinning Ruth’s pants to the ground. Ruth looked down in surprise, but then just jerked her leg up, pulling the arrow out of the asphalt. It hadn’t been able to bury itself very deep because of that.
It did give Shirley a chance to hit first, which she took by shoving Ruth down while she was off balance on one foot. Ruth tumbled to the ground, with Shirley throwing herself on top of Ruth.
Robert was about to shoot another arrow before Merlin could even think of doing something himself. Man, Robert was fast. Something happened, however. Suddenly, the string of Robert’s bow suddenly snapped in two. He barely had time to stare at the string with a look of betrayal before Lucas hit him with those sharp fingernails.
Robert screamed in pain. While Lucas was drawing back to slash him again with those claws, Merlin came to his senses and threw the pebble. He concentrated on keeping it the size of the cinder block, afraid it might change back into a pebble mid-flight if he didn’t concentrate. A pebble wasn’t likely to do much.
A girl’s scream ripped through the air, “Lucas!”
Lucas dropped to the ground immediately. Instead of hitting Lucas in the chest like he had planned, the block flew past Lucas toward Frank and Arthur.
Merlin’s eyes went wide as he realized what was happening. The surprise broke his concentration, but before the pebble changed back to normal size, the damage had already been done.
Everyone paused and stared at what Merlin had done. The block had smashed Frank in the face. He was laying on the ground, blood pouring from his face. The fighting stopped immediately, which was good since Robert seemed to be in just as bad of shape.
Ruth and Lucas dragged Frank away, and they all gathered around Robert. Peter had finally stopped moaning and joined them. He seemed a little shaken up, but none the worse for the experience. Whoever had warned Lucas must have powers similar to those of his own, Merlin thought. That would account for Peter feeling bad, the bowstring snapping, and the car problems.
When he reached Robert, Merlin realized it wasn’t a game. Robert was hurt badly. Blood covered his shirt. They could see four slices that looked like they had been made from knives raking across his chest. That wasn’t good. In fact, it was bad, really bad.
Hurriedly, he ran through a spell he had designed for emergencies. He just hadn’t expected the emergency would come so soon. Concentrating, he began the spell.
“Let my friend be healed,
And his fate unsealed.
Let my friend be healed,
And his fate unsealed.
Let my friend be healed,
And his fate unsealed.”
Merlin concentrated on the spell healing his friend. Everyone watched as the bleeding began to slow. They held their breath, waiting to see if the wound would close up. Nothing more happened, however. The cuts still continued to bleed, although not as much. Worried, everyone looked at Merlin again.
Thinking furiously, he tried again. Obviously, the first spell had helped, but just not enough. Maybe he needed a more complicated spell for a more complicated injury. Focusing his thoughts so he wouldn’t mess up the spell, he tried again.
“Now that the fighting is done,
Let the damage be undone.
Please heal my injured friend,
Before he meets his end.”
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He could feel the pressure building, the magic swelling deep inside him, trying to burst out of his control. Firmly, he held the image of his friend being healed in his mind as he continued.
“Now that the fighting is done,
Let the damage be undone.
Please heal my injured friend,
Before he meets his end.”
The pressure was intense, and he could feel the spell struggling to break free. Firmly, he continued on, determined to heal his friend.
“Now that the fighting is done,
Let the damage be undone.
Please heal my injured friend,
Before he meets his end.”
The magic burst from him, flowing into Robert. Merlin concentrated on the image of his friend being healed. Somehow, he knew that healing Robert as soon as the injury happened would make the spell stronger. He needed every bit of power to work the spell. He concentrated fiercely, willing his friend to be well.
Slowly, the wounds began to close together. Each second of the spell drained his willpower, and his ability to concentrate on the spell. Quickly, the spell became too much, and he had to release it.
Quickly, he looked at Robert’s wounds. While they were red and looked very tender, they were at least staying closed. Sighing, Merlin sat down, then laid down on his back, staring up at the dark sky.
That had been intense. How did people in the military fight battles like that? In the first seconds of the fight, two people had been badly injured, one of them by accident. That had been the worst experience of his life.
“Maybe we need to get a room for the night,” Peter said. “We probably need to regroup and come up with a plan. Obviously, this isn’t going to be as easy as we thought.”
Robert was still laying on the ground, his eyes closed, apparently still in some pain. Shirley looked at each of them and then nodded. “That might be a good idea. We can try for the mirror early in the morning.”
Picking up Robert, they headed to the car. Shirley’s brother was a little confused by the abrupt change, and what had happened to Robert. They decided that he could just be told that Robert had tripped in the darkness and hurt his chest when he fell down on something. Soon, Shirley’s brother had checked them into a nearby hotel.
Once inside, they let Robert sleep with Shirley’s brother watching over him while everyone else sat in a circle and tried to decide what to do about the situation.
“That was close tonight,” Arthur said.
Merlin agreed, “Yes, it was.”
“On the plus side, Frank won’t be quite as big of a threat as before,” Arthur said. “On the negative side, it looks like there is someone else helping them. Does anyone recognize her voice?”
Everyone looked at Shirley as if she would magically know the answer. She shook her head, “I don’t know.”
Merlin looked at her, a little annoyed with Shirley. She hadn’t done anything impressive yet with her abilities. Yes, she had a perfect memory, but she hadn’t done anything remotely like Sherlock Holmes. What had she been thinking about when she looked in the mirror? Was she just thinking about having a great memory?
Finally, she did come up with something, “She has to be one of the students at our school, or at least of their siblings. I didn’t recognize her voice, however, so more than likely she is the sister of one of the students.”
“That sounds reasonable,” Arthur said, motioning for her to continue.
Encouraged, she said, “Also, she is able to cast a few simple spells similar to Merlin. Every spell she cast had to do something with breaking things, except for Peter here,” she motioned to him, “and we don’t know what she did to him.”
“Another fact is that she wasn’t able to break Merlin’s spells, so obviously her spell abilities aren’t as powerful. If she had been dressed as a witch, she would have been as powerful as Merlin, or at least close to it. Also, she didn’t come out in the open. This could imply we might recognize her.”
Shirley paused, and no one else added anything. The silence was starting to drag on when she said, “Hmm, something else. Whatever she was dressed as had to be something magical. If I had to hazard a hypothesis, I would venture that she was a fairy. Of course, half the girls at the school were dressed as fairies.”
“That’s true,” Merlin said. “Even my sister was dressed as a fairy princess.”
“Well, now that we know about her, Merlin can take care of her,” Arthur said. “I can take care of Lucas. I don’t think Frank will be a problem for a while. Merlin hit him pretty hard. While the fairy might be able to heal him some, I doubt she can do as much as Merlin did for Robert.”
“That leaves Shirley and me to take care of Ruth,” Peter said. “Between the two of us, we should be able to do something.”
“I hate to bring this up now,” Arthur said, “but we might want to make sure we aren’t seen. The police won’t believe us and will probably just think we are stealing the mirror.”
“That’s true. I will try to come up with a spell that will disrupt any surveillance cameras,” Merlin said. “It sounds like we have a plan,” Merlin said. “I’ll need some time to come up with some counter-spells for the fairy. I’ll also figure out what I can do about the cameras as well.”
“Okay everybody,” Shirley said, “Let’s get some sleep. We’ll need to wake up early.”
With that, everyone settled down and got ready for bed, with the exception of Merlin, who sat in one of the chairs and thought about new spells.
“Let’s see,” he mumbled to himself. “What rhymes with a fairy? Berry, dairy, hairy, marry, parry, very, wary. Hmm, maybe fairy and wary. Let us be wary, of the spells of the fairy. Not bad...but I need something more.”
He spent another hour trying to come up with a way to counter the fairy’s spells and stop the cameras. Knowing he would need to get up early, he decided he should get some sleep. The next day would come soon enough.
Except for the steady hum of the air conditioner, the night was silent. Sighing, he dropped onto the floor and fell asleep almost immediately. After what seemed like a few seconds later, he was shaken awake as Arthur hissed at everyone, “Wake up guys! Wake up.”
Everyone was up in a heartbeat. Everyone except for Peter, who was missing. On the table was a note. “What does it say?” Merlin asked when Shirley picked it up.
Shirley took a moment and then started reading, “If you want to see your friend again, go home. You don’t want to find out what we are going to do to him if you continue.” She looked at everyone. “It doesn’t say anything more.” Then she looked at the note again. “Something seems familiar about this handwriting. I wish I could remember things before the mirror as much as I can after.”
Merlin looked at the others, and asked, “Can we trust them to keep their word? After all, they have already hurt Robert, and they don’t seem to have any problem hurting the rest of us either.”
Arthur immediately said, “I don’t trust them. I say we go in and rescue Peter.”
Robert was still asleep, which was good. He needed time to recuperate. That left Shirley, who said, “I agree. Even if we could trust them, we would be giving up one friend for another. We can’t let Angela down.”
“Sounds like we are rescuing Peter then,” Merlin said. “Now, where are they holding him? At the house?”
“More than likely,” Shirley said. “If not there, he’ll probably be at the other location.”
“We can leave Robert here with your brother,” Arthur said. “After we get the mirror and Peter, we can head home.”
Merlin frowned at what Arthur said, wondering if that had been a slip of the tongue. Had he meant to put the mirror before Peter? Nah, just a slip of the tongue. It happened to everyone occasionally.
Deciding that since they were awake, they might as well get started, they gathered their things and started walking to the house. They had chosen the motel because it was close to both locations. It wouldn’t take them long before they would be standing outside the house.