by Mark Tufo
Timothy was grabbing at his left hand with his right. “NO!” he cried out as the offending hand reached into a small bag. The seemingly possessed hand had difficulty with the drawstring but eventually won the battle and pulled out a red stone.
“You will do no such thing!” Timothy screamed. “I’ll kill her!” The clown lurched forward erratically as if he were the victim of a stroke, dragging a useless left leg behind him.
“Take this…I will not allow it!” Timothy said as he half-tossed half-dropped the stone near Eliza’s foot.
She reached down and palmed the stone; there was a warmth contained within it that could not be explained by merely having been pressed against the clown’s body.
“Go….Stay!” Timothy shouted.
“I will rip your….Save me–save yourself!”
Eliza looked to the monster, the cave opening behind him, the shimmering doorway immediately behind her. She didn’t know exactly what magic the stone possessed, but she had a good idea about where it came from, and it was in that man’s best interest to keep her alive. She jumped through the passage without a moment’s hesitation. The word “No!!” trailed with her even as she landed in a lush green valley. As she stood, she could see the black smudge of the polion herd off in the distance.
“Ah, it’s good to be home.” She placed the stone in her pocket and followed where the creatures led.
Chapter 7
Tim
“How can you be so stupid!” Tim railed. “You gave away our only way through and let that little piece of fun go! I should have just squashed you! It’s been so long since I’ve shared this head, I mistakenly thought we could have some good times before I buried you. But NOOOO…you had to be an uppity little prick. Let’s save the damsel in distress! I’ll tell you what, shithead, there’s no such thing as a damsel in distress. Those lying, conniving little bitches have been screwing us over since the dawn of man. Don’t believe me? How many women you think were ever killed pulling up a turnip? Now how many brutes died hunting a wooly mammoth, so Nadge the Neanderthal could have meat on her table?! And that ‘women and children first’ bullshit? What’s that all about? Screw them…they’re puny! All you gotta do is toss them out of the way like they’re a puissant quarterback. If one wants to sit on your lap once you’re on the lifeboat, that’s another thing. The woman, asshole, not the kid. That’s just fucking sick. Are you sick? Bet you are, you twisted fuck. Why else would you be down here? See, that’s where I come in. I’m going to get you on the straight and narrow!”
Timothy started laughing nearly maniacally. “Well, that’s a load of horseshit! You see, I’m just sane enough to realize how fucking insane I truly am. Me and you are going to share some wonders, that is, if I don’t kill you straight out for fucking up my chance to go back. There’s another way, you say? Well? Do tell.”
Chapter 8
Mike Journal Entry 4
I made sure Mikota and Huron were in front of us as we moved on. Helped me pretend they were our prisoners; I would have bound their hands up if not for Azile.
“Your face is going to stick like that,” Azile said as she rode up alongside.
“What face?”
“That face. That stink-eye face. Your lip is upturned, your nose is crinkled; it’s not an attractive look you have going on there.”
“You realize we just finished two wars with those assholes, right? And the one on the left there–he wants to kill me when all of this is over. I’m not thinking I want to have a tea party with them.”
“They’re in trouble, Michael.”
“Whoa, woman.” I turned in my saddle. “People are still in trouble, mostly because of them. Please tell me you’re not going all soft.”
“I’ll admit I’m not as mad at them as maybe I should be. They were led astray by an egomaniacal leader.”
“And his brother.”
“And his brother,” she repeated.
“They didn’t seem like whipped curs when they were ripping through our settlements. If anything, they seemed to be enjoying it. And now that the demons are attacking them…well, you know what? I’m surprisingly alright with it. Let them get a little taste of what we went through.”
“Perhaps there’s some truth in that, Michael, but what do you think the polions are going to do once they have finished with the Lycan?”
“We’ll deal with it when and if it comes to that.”
“Short-sighted, my husband. Here is a former enemy.”
I was about to protest the “former” part; must have shown.
“Are you going to listen?”
I nodded.
“Former enemy, potential ally, really makes no difference. Would you so willingly cast aside the one thing that stands between us and the oncoming war? If you had a wall, would you not do your best to shore it up rather than let it fall over?”
“Logic. I am always defeated by logic,” I said.
“Your one true flaw.” She leaned over and I kissed her.
“At least my penis is bigger than yours.”
“You are going to have to let that go. It’s moderately disturbing you ever had to say it, and that you keep repeating it makes me fear for what is left of your wits.”
“It’s funny, isn’t it?”
“No.” Mathieu was shaking his head.
“No.” Lana was shaking her head. She had a slightly embarrassed look on her face, maybe something mixed equally with pity for Azile.
“You can all kiss my ass. I’m going to hang out with my only friends.” I clicked and asked my mount to catch up to the Lycan. We were close to eye to eye, as I sat upon my horse.
“I can smell your distrust,” Mikota said as I came up alongside.
“Not like I’m hiding it,” I replied.
“It is good when someone’s true intentions are known, even if they are contradictory to what you would want.”
“Oh, you want us to be friends?” I asked incredulously.
“That is not the case; I am merely expressing my opinion on the matter.”
“Do you think you could kill me?” I asked.
“Is this not a baiting question? Are you not attempting to incite something within me? To perhaps defeat this alliance before it can even begin?”
“No baiting; I have been shown the error of my opinions. Unfortunately, it looks as if we’re going to need each other. I’m saying, when it’s all over and we’re back to where we were, do you truly think you can kill me?”
He did not look at me when he spoke; his answer nearly made me fall off my horse. “No.” Even Huron looked shocked. “You defeated Xavier, the most feared and terrible warrior we have ever known. You have defeated death, and you have ventured into the underworld and returned. No, Michael Talbot. I do not think I can defeat you.”
“Pride thing, then? You’re going to fight me and die for a pride thing?”
Now he did look over at me. “Would you not do the same?”
“Yeah, but I’m not considered much of a thinker among my kind.”
Mikota mirrored me. “The same could be said for me.”
“I’ll kill you if your heart is dead set on it, Mikota, but I also could have lived out the rest of my natural life happy had I never gazed upon another Lycan. We have both suffered great loss, but that is in the past. Nothing any of us can do will change that. I, for one, just wanted to be left alone, to live peacefully enough buried deep in the woods, far from everything and everyone. Just know I was never going to seek you out on a debt you figure I owe you.” I held my horse up a little to get back to Azile.
She was looking at me intently. “Just when I think your head is full of rocks and twigs you go and pull something like that.”
“I’ve seen so much death, Azile. I’ve caused a great deal of it. If I could get just one thing, one antagonist to steer their path away from mine I’ll take it. It’s hard reconciling the good man I want to be with the man I am and the things I have done.”
“Sometim
es it is necessary in life to do things you wish you did not have to; that does not make you evil.”
“I once had an argument with Paul. I told him that any way to good is good. But is it? Do the ends really justify the means?”
“Depends on what the ‘ends’ are.”
I switched off with Lana midway through the day. Sitting on the wooden seat was slightly better than the leather ass-crusher, also known as a saddle, I had been on.
“I’m not supposed to say anything,” Mathieu started.
“Um, then maybe you shouldn’t.”
“Lana is pregnant.” He was beaming.
“Is it yours?”
He directed a scowl at me.
“Fantastic.” I attempted to smooth over my slight. “Not to piss on your parade, but does the baby once a month become a crazed little beast? I would imagine keeping diapers on them that night would be a nightmare. I guess you could train it to go outside.”
“There is a reason you have so many enemies,” Mathieu said.
“I mean, dude! Congratulations!”
“It pains me that I have shared my beer with you.”
I hugged him around his shoulders. “I’m happy for you, man, I truly am. You know Lana is going to kill you when she finds out you told me, right?”
“How is she going to find out if you and I are the only ones that know?”
“Azile’s going to know I have a secret, then she’s going to call me on it. I’ll do my best to resist but then she’s going to threaten me with something like ‘I’ll turn your tallywhacker into bark’; there’s no choice at that point.”
“She wouldn’t do that.”
“I mean, yeah, odds are she wouldn’t, but she could and that’s scary enough. Is it something I would want to test out? No, man, it isn’t, so I’m apologizing now for the trouble you’re going to get into.”
“What am I going to do?” Mathieu was alarmed.
“Just tell her you were so excited to start your new family that you were busting at the seams to tell your best friend, probably the best man in the entire world. Too far?” I asked when he flinched.
“A little bit.”
“Well, you get the general idea.”
We rode farther than we usually did, knowing that Denarth was close at hand. We were less than two miles from the small city when we heard horses coming up on us from behind and quickly. The sun was beginning to set, yet I could see them clearly enough: four men and two women. All of them had their weapons out.
“Waylayers?” Mathieu asked.
“What else could they be? And I’m considered the stupid one. I mean, really, could they have picked a worse group to rob? Oh well, gives me a reason to get off this seat. You ever think about getting it upholstered? Nice cushion underneath? This roughing-it shit sucks.” I gingerly got off the wagon as Mathieu brought it to a halt. I was rubbing my ass as the first horseman got to us.
“Wait a sec…almost got the blood flowing again.” I sighed as I stood up straight.
“Gimme whatcha got!” he said, holding a rusty-looking sword off to his side. In any normal circumstances the man would indeed be intimidating; he had all the earmarks of an asshat. Patchy mustache, scar on his left cheek, dark, stringy, oily hair that fell to his shoulders, a perpetual sneer that looked Oscar-worthy. The other five riders had filled in the rest of the path behind us. As daunting as the man seemed, he had nothing on the two women in the troupe. Of them all, they looked the most willing to get down in the trenches and get this brawl underway.
“We don’t have much,” I told him.
“What’s in the wagon?”
Gabriel poked his head up from under some furs, MJ joined him and smiled at the newcomers.
“I want the children,” one of the women said.
“You heard her,” Patchy said.
By now the rest of my group had stopped and was coming back.
I called over my shoulder, “Hey, honey? Lana? These fine folk would like our kids! Is that okay with you?”
“Yeah, hon!” Patchy mocked.
“Oh man.” I rubbed my hand across my face. “This is going to be bad…for you guys.”
“That’s Lana, Chancellor of Denarth,” one of the men said. “That…that means one of them is Mathieu and he’s…he’s a werewolf.”
“I don’t care about no stupid princess or her pet,” Patchy said as he tried to bolster his claim.
There was a loud crack as an enormous tree was felled behind the would-be baby-nappers, effectively blocking their retreat.
“What type of sorcery is this?” the man next to the leader said.
“That would be my wife.” I stepped back as Azile rode toward them.
I distinctly heard, “the Red Witch” uttered in awe by more than one of the group.
The leader, feeling the need to prove his status, charged, his sword fully extended. I knew at this point I could have grabbed a couple of canteens, found a freshwater source, took a small nap, maybe done some fishing and come back and Azile would be just fine. All humor aside, this thing that called himself a man had threatened to steal my kids and run a sword through my wife; there was no way I was going to stand by and watch all that go down. I went from slightly bemused at these idiots’ poor life decisions, to blood-boiling angry. I took two steps, jumped up onto the seat I had a moment before been sitting upon, and launched myself, arms extended, into a stunned and now terrified man. I wrapped my hands into the material of his jacket as we collided. I pulled him in close as he was forced from his saddle.
I completely tore out his Adam’s apple and the surrounding throat. He was gasping for air as I pushed him into the dirt. A tortured wet sound was coming from him; I stood and wiped my mouth clean.
“Anyone else?” I asked. Their horses were wide-eyed and ready to panic, almost as much as the riders.
“We don’t want no trouble!” the man that had recognized my wife said.
“Of course you don’t because right about now you’re figuring you picked the absolute worst bunch of people to try and screw over,” I said.
“Listen, friend, we’ll just go our own way.”
“Oh, I don’t think so, friend. See, if you were just thieves looking for a few baubles I think we would have just beat you up a little and sent you on your shithead way, but now you’ve gone and shown that you’d steal children and kill women. What kind of responsible man would I be if I allowed animals like you to roam around without facing justice?”
The man swallowed hard. “Those things, they were all Lenny’s ideas.”
“I’m sure they were.” I was slowly approaching them. “The problem with mindlessly following a psychopath, though, is that makes you a psychopath by proxy, leaving you with even fewer excuses. And this world is barely up off its collective ass from the last go-around of messed up people. I’ll be damned…no, scratch that, already the case. What’s a good word?” I asked Mathieu, who was now in his werewolf form. He howled.
“Perfect. What he said. Always much more eloquent than myself.”
The leader by defacto pulled out his sword. He bared his brown-stained and pitted teeth at me as he pulled his lips back.
“I’ll kill you.” Any hint of the meek little ne’er do wrong was gone.
Oh yeah, he’d killed before. He’d done a lot of terrible things before, or at least that was what I’d convinced myself as I dodged his swing, grabbed his right leg and yanked him from his mount. He hit the ground hard enough that he dropped his sword and was concussed; he lost consciousness for a few heartbeats and looked very much like not only had his church bell been rung, but that it had also crashed from its steeple.
“I seem to have lost my socks,” he said as I stood over him.
“Going to lose a lot more than that,” I told him as I prepared to hammer his head into the ground.
“Michael,” my wife said calmly.
I paused to look up.
“Have you looked over at the wagon?”
I did so now. Three sets of eyes were looking at the scene. My kids shouldn’t have been old enough to know what was going on, but their eyes were wide and their mouths were hanging open. They knew.
“Dammit. What would you suggest I do with this piece of crap?”
“You’re going to walk away.” Her words said one thing, her expression and mannerisms a complete other. “Help him up.”
I picked the man up. He swayed before I leaned him against his horse. He grabbed onto the saddle to keep from falling over.
“I was merely going to kill you; now you’re fucked,” I whispered in his ear as I got back to the wagon. “You ready?” I asked Mathieu, who had yet to turn back around.
He sat and we got underway. We passed Mikota and Huron who were passively watching the events unfold. Wasn’t a minute or two longer when Azile and Lana galloped back to us.
“Everything all right?” I asked her.
“Could not be better.” She smiled then moved effortlessly from her horse to the back of the wagon to be with the kids.
Chapter 9
Mike Journal Entry 5
It was less frosty in Denarth toward me than I was used to, but I think that had more to do with the fact we were with two Lycans, so I appeared the lesser of three evils; the dislike for me took a huge backseat to the open loathing the Lycan received. How could it not? I was that asshole ally that no one liked but that you had to put up with because I was saving your ass, whereas the Lycan were the actual enemy, the ones that had killed fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, friends and everything in between.
“Are you coming to the council meeting?” Azile asked as she dressed. We were in our room in the great house; we’d cleaned up, got a meal and a decent amount of rest before an emergency meeting was called that next morning.
Azile had phrased her words as a question but it was more of statement, like: “You are coming to the meeting or I am going to light your nipples on fire,” type of thing.
