Nightmare Academy Monster Madness by Dean Lorey & Brandon Dorman

Author:Dean Lorey & Brandon Dorman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins

Several students crowded around Charlie, Pinch, Violet, and Theodore, checking out the slaughtered Hydra that lay on the warm sand of the beach in front of the Nightmare Academy.

“Take a good look!” Theodore said proudly. “That critter just got NM’d—Nethermanced! That’s a Theodore Dagget specialty.”

He pronounced it spesh-ee-al-it-ee.

“Why did you do it?” Violet asked, pulling Charlie away from the group, while Theodore continued to regale the crowd with his accomplishments. “Why did you open that portal for Slagguron?”

“To kill him. I meant to close it on him, just like he said. I guess I wasn’t clever enough.”

“Indeed,” Pinch said, walking up. “And what if you hadn’t been fast enough, either, allowing him to escape to Earth, unharmed?”

“He didn’t.”

“He could have. That was quite a gamble, young man.”

“Isn’t everything? Besides, if I hadn’t opened the portal, he would have killed us anyway. It put him on the defensive. I thought keeping him off balance was our best chance for survival.”

“Well, it worked,” Violet said. “I gotta give you credit for that, although I still don’t know why Slagguron just left like he did.”

“Because it was a stalemate,” Charlie replied. “He didn’t trust the portal I made but he also didn’t want to kill me, because only the Headmaster and I can make a portal big enough for him to escape through and he wanted to keep that option open in the future.”

“But why? Why would he ever trust another portal from you if he didn’t trust this one?”

“Gosh, I don’t know, Violet,” Charlie replied with a sudden flash of anger. “Unfortunately, he forgot to invite me to his ‘Escape from the Nether’ planning party.”

“Hey, relax! Don’t be such a smart aleck. I’m trying to figure all this out just like you.”

“Sorry,” Charlie said, chagrined. “I guess I’m just frustrated because I know he’s up to something but I don’t know what.”

“Maybe this was just plan A? Maybe he was just trying his luck with you, seeing if you’d panic and open a portal that he could escape through—but once he saw how tough you were, he knew he couldn’t bully you, so he moved on to plan B.”

“Which is?”

“I don’t know,” Violet said with a sigh. “Maybe plan B has nothing to do with you. Maybe he’ll just try to escape through the Anomaly if the Guardian dies.”

“But how would he get up to it?”

Violet pursed her lips, thinking. “Tyrannus? Do you think Tyrannus is strong enough to carry him there?”

Charlie shrugged. “Could be. But none of that will matter, as long as the Guardian stays healthy, which reminds me”—he turned to Pinch—“do you have the milk?”

Pinch held up the Chapstick container. “Indeed I do.”

“Excellent. We better get it to the Headmaster right away. It’s supposed to restore anyone who drinks it to when they were most powerful. I sure hope that’s true.”

“So do I,” Pinch said.

Then, to everyone’s astonishment, he took the cap off the Chapstick container and, licking his lips, drank the milk of the Mother Hydra.

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