Hunt and Power. Stephen Hayes

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СКАЧАТЬ what on earth did I have to do to get rid of her?

      “You get away from him,” she snapped at Moran, taking him completely by surprise. “He’s mine.”

      “Lena?” asked Marc, goggling at her. “You’re not wearing anything.”

      I could tell that he was having as much trouble taking his eyes off her as I had. In truth, she wasn’t completely naked; she was still in her bikini, but I knew what Marc meant.

      “I’ve been swimming,” she said, placing her hands around Moran’s throat and proceeding to strangle him.

      He gagged, and the ghosts sprang into action. Lena was lifted into the air and slammed against the wall, and I could tell it was the woman ghost that had done it this time. The Hero Crystal, which in real life belonged to Marc, went rolling across the floor, now split into six smaller crystals, and Marc lunged at it but Hal and Pol headed him off.

      I took advantage of the distraction to get back to the exit door. I opened it, and a blinding white light filled the room. I covered my eyes and stepped forward, knowing that I had to get through this, but my feet had left the floor, and the next thing I knew, I was standing in Room 11 with a desk in front of me, and Hall still standing behind me. I was back! Back in the real world at last. It was the first time ever—and would no doubt be the only time—that I found myself happy to see Hall.

      I checked my watch, and noticed that it was still only just before half past 3… No time had passed at all.

      “Well done,” said Hall. “You managed to get through okay.”

      I could hear the disappointment in his voice; he had clearly hoped I would die in there.

      “What was it?” I asked. “Was it all in my head?”

      “In a sense,” he said. “It’s enchanted to extract as many thoughts, hopes and feelings from your mind that it can, and turn them against you.”

      “And that it did,” I said darkly.

      “I suggest you go away and think about what took place in there,” he went on bitterly. “It may prove useful. Seeing your own thoughts, hopes and feelings in front of you can make them easier to understand in the real world.”

      I thought about that and realised that he probably had a point, though I would have to go over it all in my head before I could understand anything.

      “Very well,” said Hall, snapping me out of my musings. “That’s enough of a task for today, and this is your last detention too. At least until you earn some more. I hope you don’t.”

      “So do I,” I said, but I wasn’t going to leave without one question answered first. “Where did that thing come from anyway? How did you get hold of it?”

      Hall looked surprised, and not altogether happy that I had asked. “It came from the Sorcerers, Playman, obviously. It was given to the school as a task for year-twelve students preparing for their exams to test their discipline. I was able to convince the principal to let me use it this afternoon. That is really all there is to it.”

      “Right, thanks,” I said, and left the room and walked away without looking back. That was not all there was to it, I knew, for two reasons. Firstly, Hall had neglected to mention which family of Sorcerers had provided that particular piece of magic; and secondly, he hadn’t quite been able to meet my eyes as he spoke of the year-twelve exam preparation crap. I supposed there was a chance he was telling the truth-the story sounded plausible enough—but I had my doubts.

      As I walked, I felt in my pocket, and my hand found the Light Crystal. My relief that Hall really hadn’t been trying to take it was enormous. Then I also noticed that all the aches and pains I’d had when I stepped into that white light were gone too. I assumed that meant that it had operated the same as the Transgators, in the sense that my actual body had never gone in there. That was a huge relief.

      Chapter 5: Knowledge Can’t Buy Me Balls

      My mind was working harder than it had all week as I walked home by myself. Memories of what I had experienced inside the magical box thing, whatever it was, were filling my mind, and I was trying to understand why the box had chosen to use those things against me.

      Hall had said that the box used magic to extract as much as possible from my mind and use it against me. This most likely meant two things: the box couldn’t present me with any factual information that I didn’t already know; and the behaviour of the people inside the box was decided on how I viewed them, rather than how they actually were. Or perhaps it wasn’t how I viewed them, but how I thought and felt about them, and hoped they would behave. Hall should have included fear on his list, because the actions of Tommy and Lena could only fit that category. The logical part of my mind knew their behaviour would never be quite so extreme, but those thoughts must have come from somewhere. Was I secretly scared of them?

      That business with Natalie was nothing more than fantasy, but it was certainly within the realms of my imagination. And the way she knew how I felt? I expected that was just magic pulling something together that I was sure to believe. I remembered the feel of her hands, but again that was nothing I hadn’t experienced already. About a year earlier, we’d played a game where we had all held hands in a circle. I’d been next to Natalie. As for the kiss, well, it couldn’t have taken place because I had no idea what it was going to feel like. That was probably why we’d been interrupted.

      The business with Tommy? I’d never seen him behave like that, though I expected he could probably do so (apart from multiplying himself), so of course the box was able to make it happen. That was another thing holding me back with Natalie: If Nicole was okay with it, then that should have been the green light, because she was the one who would have made it most difficult for me if she disapproved, being Natalie’s best friend. But I could remember her telling Stella that she knew who Natalie liked, and I now knew that had been me, so she must have been okay with it.

      Or was she? She had never made moves to get us together, never showed any encouragement to the idea, and never tried to get Natalie in my good books, not that she would have needed to. Perhaps she already suspected me. Maybe Peter or James had let something slip…

      There was nothing unusual about the classroom scenario. Certainly everyone in there had acted as I would expect them to in that unusual situation. Well, everyone except Serena. I remembered that she had taken my hand too, and it took me a moment to think when it had happened before. Then I remembered a sunny day a few weeks earlier, when Serena and I were wrestling together in the Jade River. But I had never imagined her hitting Wilwog. I tried to remember anything that might have given me that view of her, and the only thing I could think of was when we were fighting Moran; she’d taken some pretty furious swipes at him that day.

      There was nothing particularly unusual about what had happened in the last room, either. Marc had acted exactly as I would have expected him to, as had Moran and his spook gang. I’d never seen that ghost woman attack anybody, like she did Lena, but my mind was certainly capable of imagining it. As for Moran telling us who she was, well he couldn’t have done, because that information wasn’t inside my head.

      And Lena? Her behaviour was similar to what she had shown late the previous week, though it was far more exaggerated. If we had been swimming together, I could imagine her trying to drag me in if I didn’t want to swim with her, although I doubted she would strip me in the process. That had definitely been based on fantasy, rather than reality. I tried to remember СКАЧАТЬ