Bad Unicorn Read online

  “I see,” Cenede answered, but if there was disappointment in her voice Max didn’t hear it. “I know you doubt yourself, but there’s something you should know: You and your friends are in danger. When she discovers you’re here—and she most certainly will—you’ll be hunted and killed. You did something far beyond what we can do, Max. You jumped across time. That’s an amazing feat and not something to be taken lightly. So you’ve brought this book into our world, and now there are two sources of magic here. I wonder if the one is powerful enough to destroy the other?”

  Max didn’t know what to say. He had figured things were just about as bad as they could get. Now he was talking to an arcade game, and somebody he didn’t even know wanted to kill him. “The Codex has something,” he finally acknowledged. “Maybe it’s magic, but I don’t know how to control it.”

  “Not yet. But things change, Max. I’m proof of that. So here, then, is where I make a choice—a very important choice. Of course, within microseconds of me just saying that, my processors have already tabulated the various pros and cons and have calculated the most appropriate action. But if I just go and blurt it out you might think I’m being hasty, so I could pause a bit if you’d like—if it helps you feel like I’ve thought it through.”

  Max pushed his glasses back up his nose and wondered if he was mixed up in some kind of horrible game, like a cat playing with a mouse—with him as the mouse. “Uh, I guess I’m ready if you are,” he finally said.

  The spider creature with the Codex turned and pulled the book to Max’s feet. He watched as the creature darted off, leaving the book behind. Max grabbed the Codex off the floor and blew dust from the ancient cover. Despite having had a rough day, the Codex looked no worse for wear.

  “I’ve decided to help you,” Cenede announced. “I’ve lived through the age of man and now the age of machines. Both have their issues, believe me. But the creature that hunts you is evil, and I think humankind deserves a second chance. So take your book and learn your craft well, for only the most powerful magic will win the day. She was born like you, but she has become like us.”

  “So, you want me to fight a girl?” Max asked, trying to work it all out.

  “Not a girl. A unicorn.”

  “Wait, a unicorn wants me dead?”

  “Not just a unicorn—a bad unicorn. But there are those in the forest who can aid you—and perhaps you, them. My children will steer them toward you and your friends. But we must be quick, for the hunt is already on and those who can help are fleeing as we speak.”

  “But can’t you just help us get home?” Max pleaded, not liking the whole notion of a killer unicorn. “This is the future, so you’ve probably worked out stuff like time travel, right? I don’t want to fight anything—I just want to go back.”

  “I’m sorry, Max. It may not be the help you want, but it’s all that I can give. Maybe fate brought you here for some bigger purpose? I’m not programmed to believe in fate, but humans have always been remarkable creatures. And a human with a little faith . . . ? Well, now there’s a powerful combination. But our time is up. And you, I’m afraid, are much too slow and noisy in the woods.”

  Max felt a prick on his ankle. He looked down in time to see a metallic spider about the size of his fist, withdrawing its fangs.

  “Poison . . . ?” Max managed to ask, the world starting to spin.

  “Sleep, Max Spencer. My children will carry you swiftly to your friends. And learn your magic well, for what hunts you is more frightening than you can imagine.”

  And once again Max fell into darkness.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  A HUNTRESS REBORN

  (THE TECHRUS—FUTURE)

  MAX DREAMED ABOUT VINTAGE ARCADE GAMES. HE WAS PLAYING next to a mechanical spider, and the two of them were trying to navigate a long centipede through a minefield of exploding mushrooms. It all seemed to make perfect sense, up to the moment the horn blared. That part just seemed out of place. Then it bellowed again. Max’s arcade dream crumbled away as he reflexively shot his hand out, patting at the ground to turn his alarm off. But his brain informed the rest of him that he didn’t actually have an alarm because he was out in the woods. And more important, he should probably wake up and figure out what that noise was all about. And if it wasn’t asking too much, his brain continued, he should probably do it sooner than later.

  “What was that?” Sarah exclaimed. Her voice bounced around in Max’s semiconscious head, jolting him awake.

  Max shot up, his eyes wide and the Codex clutched tightly to his chest. He looked around to see his fellow campers in much the same state of confusion. It was still dark, but the sky was a deep purple instead of black, suggesting that sunrise was getting closer.

  “Quickly, put out the fire!” Dwight commanded, hurrying over to kick dirt on the final glowing embers. The rest joined in until the last of it was smothered.

  They stood around the fire pit, their breath forming in the cold air as they remained quiet and listened.

  “That sounded like a horn,” Sarah said finally, her teeth starting to chatter.

  Max reached down and scratched at his ankle, seeing two small bite marks. He was having a hard time piecing together what had happened during the night.

  “Everyone get your things,” Dwight said. The group gathered their belongings (which wasn’t much), and Max stuffed the Codex into his backpack, which he slung over his shoulders. He patted at his belt and found Glenn there, sheathed and presumably ready. Or at least sheathed.

  “Maybe a horn is a good thing,” Dirk said quietly. “It doesn’t have to mean something bad, does it?”

  “Here’s everything you need to know about horns,” Dwight replied. “If you’re out and about in a strange land and you didn’t blow it, it’s not good.”

  “You can’t say that for certain,” Sarah added.

  “You’re right,” Dwight answered bluntly. “And that’s exactly the kind of thing the fox thinks until the hound has him by the throat.”

  “Ew,” Sarah replied.

  “Not ‘ew,’ ” Dirk disagreed, stamping his feet and trying to stay warm. “Hounds are cool—way better than just dogs.”

  They waited for several more minutes, but nothing happened.

  “Hey, funny story—does anyone remember me being gone last night?” Max blurted out. “Or maybe me returning like, way later than I should have? It might have stood out to you because I was being carried by a bunch of mechanical spiders.”

  Everyone stared at Max.

  “So, uh . . . do you think you went someplace last night?” Sarah asked.

  “I did. I chased the Codex into the woods . . . it was being dragged by a robot spider—”

  “Awesome!” Dirk exclaimed, making his views on robot spiders clear.

  “Anyway,” Max continued, “I ended up at the old cement factory. And once inside there was like this eighties centipede game that told me that we’re in some kind of machine future and there’s a unicorn that wants to kill me.”

  “Just you?” Dwight asked hopefully.

  “Er, well I think all of us,” Max replied. “But probably me first.”

  “Of course!” Dirk cried out. “Centipede is a game full of spiders. And spiders took the book. Don’t you see? It all makes perfect sense.”

  “Obviously a talking arcade game full of spiders makes complete sense,” Sarah said, not even trying to hold the sarcasm back.

  “No, of course not,” Dirk shot back. “A talking arcade game with spiders. That’s airtight, people.”

  But before they could debate the issue further a crash came from the nearby tree line. A band of little creatures wearing tunics and carrying leaves spilled into the clearing, and Max recognized them at once as the frobbits he’d been reading about in the Codex. They stopped, surprised to see Max and his friends standing there. One of the frobbits cautiously stepped forward. He had a large afro that made him seem taller than the rest, and he was clutching mint leaves in his small h
and.

  “I’m prepared to rub these over myself,” the frobbit said in perfect English. “If it comes to that.”

  “Hey, you’re frobbits, aren’t you?” Max asked.

  “Well, of course they’re frobbits,” Dwight grumbled. “But what are a bunch of frobbits doing in the Techrus?”

  The lead frobbit shrugged. “Mostly running.”

  “Why are you running?” Sarah asked.

  “The great hunt,” the frobbit continued. “They kill us for sport.”

  “They? They doesn’t sound good,” Dirk said, looking around.

  “They aren’t good, they are evil,” the frobbit continued. “But what about you? Are you evil or good? And remember, I’m holding mint leaves in case you’re thinking of doing anything rash.”

  “No, of course we’re not evil,” Sarah answered, leaning down so she was closer to making eye contact. Sarah had read something about needing to do that when communicating with children, and that’s what the frobbits seemed like to her. “We’re humans.”

  “Humans . . . ,” the frobbits said to one another, walking over to Max and his friends and sizing them up.

  “We thought all the humans were dead,” the afro’d frobbit continued.

  “We sort of just arrived,” Max replied.

  The frobbit nodded. “Well, we can’t talk about it now. The unicorn is coming. Follow us if you want to live.” And with that the frobbits took off with surprising speed, running through the camp and disappearing into the woods on the other side.

  “I didn’t think frobbits could run like that,” Max said, slightly confused. “The Codex said they walked when they were pursued.”

  “Yeah, well even frobbits can learn to sprint if they’ve been chased long enough,” Dwight answered. “And frankly, I think sprinting is a pretty good idea.”

  “The key to a successful escape from an unknown monster is to believe you’re good enough,” Glenn offered from his spot on Max’s belt. “You’ve got to feel that you deserve to not be eaten. Also, it helps if you can run faster than a dwarf.”

  “Ha! Good luck with that!” Dwight yelled, peeling away and running after the frobbits.

  Max and Dirk both looked at Sarah, but Sarah had already made up her mind. She gave Max a shove that got him moving toward the woods. “Run!”

  Dirk zoomed ahead, bounding into the woods as if he were a deer. Sarah quickly caught up to Max, then passed him as they crashed headlong into the forest. It wasn’t fair, Max thought to himself. He’d already had to run through the woods once already.

  As they scrambled into a thicker section of the forest, the moon disappeared behind the forest canopy. Max was constantly tripping over long roots, or getting whipped in the face by the thin branches. He did his best to keep up, but Dirk had disappeared some time ago, and he was beginning to lose track of Sarah as well. His legs were screaming in protest, and if that wasn’t bad enough, his glasses were beginning to steam up so it was even harder to see. He continued running, looking down and focusing on just placing one foot in front of the other.

  Max didn’t know how long he’d run. His glasses had become completely fogged over, making it impossible to see anywhere but down. So he just plunged forward until he didn’t have the strength to go on. Tired, blind, and starting to feel a rising panic, Max finally came to a stop near a large tree, breathing in big gasps through his mouth. He took his glasses off and cleaned them as best as he could, his aching muscles screaming at him that they’d had enough. There was no sign of his friends. He tried to listen over the sounds of his own breathing, but only his wheezing filled his ears. Max had no idea where he was, but he knew that he was lost and alone.

  The Boy Scouts taught that when separated from your pack, you were supposed to stop and wait for someone to find you. Max had spent one summer at Scout camp, until he nearly strangled himself with his neckerchief. But he remembered the bit about stopping and waiting, which at the moment seemed like a pretty good idea. In fact, it seemed like the only idea worth having. Max put his hands on his knees and tried to catch his breath, watching as the sweat dripped from his face and collected on the ground near his shoes. They were dorky shoes—bought at a 50-percent-off sale from a discount shoe store. He’d gotten upset at his mom for making him wear them to school. Thinking about it now made the shoes seem like the most trivial thing in the world. He’d happily wear high heels if he could just be home again.

  Max stayed still for some time.

  Then a twig snapped.

  Max held his breath. He grabbed hold of his backpack straps and slowly crouched down, hiding behind some saplings and shrubs. He tried to make himself into as small a ball as possible. There weren’t a lot of things Max was good at, but hiding was something he’d been forced to practice most of his life.

  The crunching sound of twigs breaking filled the early-morning air.

  Max tried telling himself it was probably just a deer prancing about in the woods. In fact, Max would be happy with any approaching animal so long as it pranced. Monsters might skulk, or lurk, or waylay, or even bushwhack. But they couldn’t prance—that was a fundamental law of nature.

  There was more noise nearby. It sounded big and heavy and moved in a slow and methodical way. It had no pranciness to it whatsoever. Max swallowed hard.

  Something stepped into the opening. It was a machine—a silver robot that looked somewhat like a horse. It had shiny metallic skin and red, burning eyes. But on closer inspection, Max could see that the metallic horse had a perfectly swirled ice-cream-cone-looking horn mounted on its head. Some of the fine wires that made up the mane were colored pink, as were the brightly painted hooves. This was the monster Max had been warned about. And as he saw it standing there, just a few yards away from where he hid, he realized it was also the unicorn he had read about in the Codex: Princess the Destroyer. Only now she was some kind of robot. She was born like you, but she has become like us. Cenede’s words burned in Max’s memory. This was the thing that wanted him dead.

  The robotic unicorn lifted its nose holes. “Magar, come here!” Robo-Princess commanded, its sensors tasting the air. When it spoke, its mouth exposed rows of sharp, metal teeth.

  A second object came hovering into the clearing. At first Max thought it was a ball, but then he realized it looked like a head that had been taken off a statue and then dipped in metal. At its base a silent engine propelled it along, sending occasional whiffs of black smoke trailing behind it. Max recognized the face as the wizard standing next to Princess in the Codex. Or at least the upper seventh of him.

  “Should I sound the horn again, Princess?” Robo-Magar asked.

  “Why not? It’s one of the few things you’re somewhat competent at.”

  The mouth of the Robo-Magar head opened impossibly wide, allowing the end of a loudspeaker to extend out. When it blared, it was incredibly loud—and it was all Max could do to keep from jumping up and running.

  After the noise dissipated, the horn retracted. “Are we waiting here, then?” Robo-Magar continued.

  “Be patient. I’m reading a part of my memory core that I haven’t accessed in years.”

  “It wouldn’t be your compassion sub-routine, would it? Am I to finally hope that you’re going to allow me to be free of this mechanized existence?”

  Robo-Princess took a swipe at Robo-Magar with her horn, but the head floated easily out of the way. “Insolent as always!” Robo-Princess exclaimed. “Why do I keep you around?”

  “If only my programming allowed me to be impaled and be done with it,” Robo-Magar answered, settling back to his spot near the robot unicorn.

  “Does everything have to be about you, Magar? You’re really not that interesting. I, on other hand, am finding something very old in my database that shouldn’t be here. Yes . . . but it can’t be.”

  “Oh do tell, the suspense is killing me.”

  Robo-Princess considered taking another swipe at him, but she was having to direct extra resources from he
r CPU to double-check her finding. After a moment, she was sure. “Human,” she said flatly. “I smell human.”

  “Human? That’s impossible,” Robo-Magar replied. “You ate the last one on August 6, 2388. His name was Francois and his last words were, ‘Seriously, I’m the last human on the planet and you’re making me into quiche?’ ”

  “Apparently you’re wrong, Magar—wrong and incompetent as usual. My smell cells do not lie.”

  “The only thing I was wrong about was agreeing to have my consciousness transferred into this flying toaster of a head.”

  “That’s always been your problem, you never had any vision,” Robo-Princess replied, scanning the ground for signs of footprints. “Even from the time I was a young unicorn, exploring the Magrus—”

  “Ravaging and burning, more like.”

  “Either way, I should have traded you in to Rezormoor when I had the chance.”

  “But then I would have missed out on all of this,” Robo-Magar replied sarcastically. “So many centuries together.”

  “Ah, but didn’t I tell you? Technology is the new magic. And now look at us—immortal and holo-stars to boot!”

  A blue light started blinking on Robo-Princess’s chest as a small drawer slid open. “What’s this?” she said, looking down.

  “If you’re baking cookies I think they’re done.”

  A small, clawlike arm extended from Robo-Princess’s shoulder and retrieved the Gossamer Gimbal from the concealed compartment. The inner rings dislodged and swung open, rotating and spinning around the small sphere at the center. As they spun faster, the ornate arrow appeared and began pointing in the direction Max was hiding.

  Max’s heart sank. So this is how he would die. At least his friends weren’t with him.

  “And speaking of magic, look at that!” Robo-Princess exclaimed. “I’ve still got enough to make the Gimbal work.”

  “Fascinating,” Robo-Magar responded. “But the more important question is why? Why has the Gimbal been activated after all these years?”

  “Why? There can be only one why, Magar,” Robo-Princess replied, staring at the translucent Gimbal as it hovered in the air, spinning so fast it hummed. “He’s here. Max Spencer, the boy wizard, is here!”