Shadows in the Mist

by Jeri Westerson

  I wanted to cry, but the tears didn’t come. I think I had been wrung dry by all that had happened recently.

  The clock chimed. It was hours past the time Erasmus had to return before the Wiccan’s spell killed him.

  I rose with difficulty. “I think we should call it a night,” I said.

  “Kylie…” Doc was by my side first. Of course, he was. I think he knew how I felt. Oh, they all knew that Erasmus and I had been intimate. Well, they knew about the first time, not the second.

  Ed didn’t know at all.

  “Is there really any point in still hanging around, Doc?”

  He didn’t seem to know what to say to that, so he wisely kept quiet. I could tell Seraphina longed to comfort me with an embrace, but Doc seemed to be holding her back. Our Goth lite Wiccan Nick put a comforting arm around Jolene.

  As if reacting to some silent signal, they broke rank and began gathering their things. It meant we’d have to figure out how to fight a god on our own without Erasmus’ help. Baphomet was still out there, and no one knew what kind of havoc he intended to wreak. I knew we could do it. At least we could try. But it would have been easier with—

  Tap, tap, tap.

  We all jumped. A raven was pecking at the window. We stared at it, horrified, as it began to peck again more persistently.

  I looked to Doc. “What…what is that?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  I tugged my coat over my chest. I couldn’t seem to warm up. “I’m…I’m going to go see.”

  Nick grabbed my arm. “Are you crazy? You don’t know what or who that is. It could be Shabiri in disguise.”

  I wasn’t getting a Shabiri vibe from the sleek, black bird. I didn’t quite know how to convey that, so I just gently dislodged his hand and crossed the room toward the window. It hopped away as I approached. I turned the lock and pushed up the sash. A cold blast of air gusted in, flaring the curtains. I stared at the raven standing on my porch, glaring its beady eye before it spread its wings and zoomed toward me. With a cry, I ducked, and it swept in over my head. I whipped around to look at it, expecting it to transform into someone. Maybe Shabiri after all. But it merely circled Doc before it reared back, shot forward, and hit the wall with such force that I felt the room shake. It spattered in a gore of feathers and black blood…until the feathers fell away and the black ooze dripped down my wall, forming into something like letters.

  I heard the sound of a camera shutter. Jolene had taken a picture with her tablet, before lowering it with a look of awe on her face. No doubt she would analyze it. The letters clearly weren’t English. Elvish, for all I knew.

  “What the hell was that?” cried Nick.

  I cautiously approached and looked over the weird dripping script. “A message, I guess. But from whom?”

  Doc scratched his white-haired head. “As soon as we decipher it—that is, Jolene and I—we can tell you.”

  “Why do you need it deciphered?” asked Jeff, struggling to keep the crocheted throw around him.

  “Because, Jeff,” I said, exhausted to my marrow, “we don’t speak splatter.”

  “I can read it,” he said.

  Slowly, everyone turned toward him. He caught the movement and glared back. “Can’t you?”

  “No, Jeff. We can’t. It’s in some weird language.”

  “It isn’t. I can read it.”

  I was about to let him have it when Doc intervened. “Now hold on, Kylie. Jeff, are you telling us you can read that message?”

  “Why is everyone freaking out? It’s English.”

  “It’s a demon language, far as I can tell,” said Jolene.

  “Curious,” said Seraphina. She crossed her arms over her chest, the bangles on her wrists clinking softly.

  Doc nodded slowly. “If it’s a demon language then I suppose it makes sense that Jeff can now read it. He’s part, well, creature. Almost a demon. Or at least of the same realm.”

  “Great,” said Jeff. “That’s just great.”

  “So what does it say?” asked Jolene.

  Jeff squinted at the splatter slowly dripping into long lines of black. “It says, ‘I should have died hours ago but I’m still holding on. I’m coming back to you.’”

  “Erasmus,” I whispered. I walked up to the wall and touched the ichor when it suddenly vanished, black feathers and all. I whipped around. “Where is he?”

  “I can’t believe it,” said Doc incredulously. “How could he possibly have survived?”

  “He did.” My heart felt three sizes larger, and it was beating madly. “He’s out there. We’ve got to go look for him.”

  “Kylie, it could be a trick. Shabiri could have sent it to lure you out there.”

  “I’ve got to take the chance. I’ll find him.” I stomped toward the door when a hand closed on my arm and pulled me back.

  Ed looked down on me. “There’s something you’re not telling me.”

  I shook him off. “I don’t have time for this. Erasmus is in trouble.” I buttoned up my coat and threw open the door. My face was blasted with cold.

  I could hear the others behind me. Some of them were calling me back, but I heard Nick swear as he hurried along the gravel, muttering and struggling into his jacket. “Whichever way you go, I’ll go the opposite,” he said. “Cover more territory.”

  “Thanks, Nick. I’m going towards the woods.”

  “Then I’ll head up the other way over the hill. I hope I don’t get killed.” He tossed the words out like a joke, but there was an underlying current of gallows humor. After all, he could get killed. So could I. Not only were Andras and Baphomet out there, but the Booke could have released another creature to catch us completely off guard.

  I stumbled over the bracken. Taking out my phone, I switched on the flashlight. The light shone over the woods, bringing out new shadows, transforming every mound of dead leaves and gnarled root into something sinister. I didn’t care anymore if other things out there could hear me coming. It didn’t matter. “Erasmus!” I called. “Erasmus!”

  The trees grew denser, their dark trunks rising in straight lines in front of me, an endless march into the deepening mist. “Erasmus!” In the distance, I think I heard Nick call out his name, too. It gave me hope. No one else liked the demon or trusted him. But for Nick to do this for me… I choked back my tears and cleared my throat. “Erasmus!”

  Wait. Was that a groan?

  I listened, cocking my head and straining my ears. Standing perfectly still, I waited to hear it again. It could have been my imagination, or just hope playing on my feelings. I almost called out again when I thought I heard that soft sound once more. I moved carefully in the direction of the noise and stopped when I clearly heard it.

  I ran, the light from my phone jostling up and down. The moaning came louder, until I knew I was close by. I moved the phone’s light slowly in a circle. There! Not a clump of leaves. Someone was on the ground. I rushed to him and fell to my knees.

  “Erasmus!”

  He moaned again, then out of his mouth in a rusty voice came, “Kylie?”

  “I can’t believe it.” I gently turned him over…and gasped. A fist-sized hole on his chest was oozing black blood. “Oh my God!”

  “It’s nothing.”

  “Erasmus, there’s a hole in you!”

  “You are wont to state the obvious,” he grunted. “Yes, there is a hole, but it will heal.”

  “But what about…what about the melted coin? Doc was supposed to get it out of you.”

  “I believe that was taken care of. Do you not see this enormous hole in my chest?” He coughed, then winced in pain.

  “But how did you—?”

  “We have to go, Kylie. Now.”

  I was about to ask when I heard it. Twigs snapping, brush moving. A sluggish step, followed by many more. And then the sounds of voices, speaking in a guttural tongue, coming toward us.

  Chapter Two

  “You came out into the darkne
ss without your crossbow?” Even in pain, his English-accented voice was accusatory.

  I grunted as I heaved him to his feet. “You’re yelling at me now?”

  “Foolish mortal,” he muttered. I got under his arm and moved with him, but it was clear we weren’t going to outrun whatever was coming toward us. And now there was a familiar smell on the wind, one that reminded me of the succubus. The smell of death.

  “Another succubus?”

  “No. They are the ones who ripped out my chest. And a good thing, too. That coin was killing me.”

  “They? What are they?”

  We couldn’t move fast enough. Out of the mist, I could see shambling figures approaching. “Oh, shit. Erasmus, you have to move!”

  “Leave me. Run, Kylie.”

  “I won’t leave you.”

  He tried to shake me off but seemed too weak and slumped against me. “They don’t want me. They want you.”

  My grip on him tightened. “I’m not leaving you.”

  “Dammit, why can’t you listen to me?”

  “Because you’re a liar.”

  The figures in the mist drew closer. As they shambled forward, I was beginning to make out some of their details. “What the actual hell?” Some were bent over, as if heavy weights were on their shoulders. As they drew closer, I realized—to my horror—that it was because they had lost an arm…or an ear…or the side of their torso. They wore long tunics with bits of armor buckled to their chests, and chain mail hanging almost to their knees. Some wore dented helmets covering their heads like pointed caps, with parts that came down and covered their noses. They were carrying axes, round broken wooden shields, and short swords, the blades of some snapped off. A few had beards and ratty braids hanging from the sides of their temples.

  But their faces… I could smell them as they approached. That sweet, overpowering smell of rotting flesh. Some of their faces were little better than skulls. What flesh remained was drawn taut over cheekbones and sunken around eye sockets. They smiled from ghastly mouths with no lips. And some were missing limbs. No…not missing. They were still hanging by stretching lengths of tendons, dragging those limbs along the ground. Skin and muscle hung from some of their faces and necks, where I could see right through to their spines. They were walking corpses. I was in the middle of Knight of the Living Dead.

  “Are you kidding me?” I gasped. “Are these freakin’ zombies?”

  “The Draugr. You would know them as Vikings.”

  “Viking zombies? Because regular zombies aren’t bad enough?”

  “Can you move faster?”

  “I can’t, because you can’t.”

  “They tore into me before realizing I was a demon. It was lucky for me, for when they tore through my flesh, they also expelled the coin and ended the spell. Though I don’t know how I lasted this long once the spell expired.”

  I heaved him along. A new urgency gave me the strength, but I could tell it wasn’t going to be enough. “What happened when they realized you were a demon?”

  “They left me alone. They knew they cannot consume me. You, on the other hand, are fresh meat.”

  “Crap.” I urged him faster.

  “So it is best you leave me. I will be fine. I will heal. But you are in danger.”

  I looked up into the tangled shadows of branches. “Why isn’t the crossbow coming?”

  “Because you have nothing that can readily kill a Draugr.”

  “But if they’re from the Booke…”

  “They aren’t from the book.”

  “What?”

  “Kylie, there is no time to argue. You must go.”

  “I won’t leave you.”

  “Beelze’s tail! I tell you I am not in danger. You are!”

  That stench was getting stronger, and one of the fellows with a rusty but still mean-looking axe was lumbering closer. He slid his jaw back and forth with a horrible clicking sound. Something icky was oozing from his rotten-toothed grimace. I debated whether to cover my nose or not. “Are you sure they won’t hurt you?”

  “They would have eaten me already.”

  Now you know how it feels, Mr. Soul-Eater, I wanted to say. But now was definitely not the time. I had only seconds to decide when I tripped over a damned root. Erasmus fell one way and I fell the other down a shallow ravine. I rolled through the leaves and stopped when I hit a boulder.

  “Ow.” Rubbing my head, I looked up. I saw sky…before rotting Viking heads poked into my view.

  “Crap!” The axe whistled toward me as I rolled out of the way. Then it came down again in the direction I was rolling, so I went the other way and sure enough, it came down over there too.

  Trapped. On my back was a real bad place to be. One of them lunged toward me, and this time my reaction seemed to have nothing to do with the absent crossbow. I somehow sprang to my feet with a sort of cartwheel. Before I could think about how I’d pulled that off, I shot straight up into the air and grabbed onto a tree branch just as the Draugr advanced on me, dumbly looking around the place I used to be.

  Still shocked that I had managed these ninja moves, I hung on the branch, looking down at milling zombies waving their rusty weapons around below me. I was about fifteen feet up. There was no way—even with all the adrenaline in the world—I could have leapt that high on my own. It had to have something to do with the Booke. Chosen Host skills.

  Of course, I was still fifteen feet up. What was I going to do now?

  I looked around. Surrounded by pine trees. No convenient Tarzan vines. Somehow, I was either going to have to climb higher or drop. I didn’t love the idea of dropping, considering the zombies below. But my grip was slipping. Bark was not the best thing to hang from. For one, it hurts. And two…did I really need a two?

  I decided to go on instinct. Instinct had gotten me out of trouble in the past, so I let the Chosen Host powers do their thing. But unfortunately, their “thing” was—

  “Oh, no!”

  —dropping down on the Vikings.

  Three of them had gathered below me. I fell like a rock, smashing them down into the leaf duff. Their rotted bones crunched and their flesh squelched as all three doubled under me.

  I scrambled free, vowing to throw my boots away after this.

  But when I looked up, more Draugr were approaching from over the hill.

  “Running,” I muttered breathlessly. “Running’s a good option.” My feet hit the ground as I pelted out of there, hoping that Erasmus hadn’t lied to me. Praying that he’d be all right.

  I ran hard down into the ravine, through the steep “V” in the terrain. I heard armor clanking behind me and risked looking back. “Ho-ly shit.” They could run! I amped up my speed, but I knew that running through such a narrow space was strategically bad. I had to get out. I ran as fast as I could up the angled sides of the ravine. When I reached the top, I stopped and looked back. Bad idea. At least ten of them were converging out of the woods. They opened their boney jaws as one and howled an inhuman sound. Waving their weapons, they started for me again.

  I was running out of ideas. I could sprint back to my shop, but then what? Would I just be trapped? And what about everyone else in the village? Was I leading them back to more innocent people? Or were they just after me like the incubus had been? Because if they didn’t emerge from the Booke, then I had a pretty good notion where they did come from.

  “Doug, you son of a bitch,” I rasped. My new ninja skills made me grab for a big branch that I was sure I wouldn’t be able to lift…but looky there. I could!

  I gripped it hard and spun around. The closest Viking got a face-full of bark and soared backwards. One of his arms fell off as he flipped over. No time to think about that as I was already lunging at another one. His booted feet went up in the air, and he was down and out. Another one came at me, swinging his sword. I held up the branch to block the blow, the blade getting stuck in the wood. While he was trying to pull it free, I flung him, branch and all, toward a tree. He smac
ked into it with a sort of splat.

  But now I’d lost my branch, and the other seven were still coming toward me. I had no weapon. I desperately searched for anything, a rock, a branch, a hefty squirrel—anything!

  That horrible rotting smell was far too close to me, and when I whipped my head around, a zombie Viking was right there in my personal space. I screamed…and then his head exploded.

  Wait, what?

  The body fell at my feet, exploded brains all over me, and there was Ed, still aiming his smoking gun with both hands and feet apart. He lowered the gun only slightly. “Kylie, what the hell are these?”

  “Um…zombie Vikings.”

  “What?”

  “Ed, look out!”

  I pointed behind him, and he spun, firing. Right in the head again. That seemed to do the trick, but the ones I had smacked with my tree branch were getting up.

  “We’ve got to go get Erasmus,” I told him, grabbing his arm.

  “We’ve got to get out of here.”

  “With Erasmus.”

  “I really hate that guy,” he muttered, but he ran with me anyway.

  Erasmus was propped against a tree, eyes closed, looking seriously injured. Or dead. No, he couldn’t be dead.

  “Erasmus!” I cried, landing on my knees by his side.

  His eyes snapped open and he glared. “What are you—” But then he caught sight of Ed. “What is he—”

  “He knows.” I grabbed him by the arm and dragged him to his feet.

  Erasmus leaned into me. “What do you mean ‘he knows’?”

  “He knows. Everything.”

  “Even about…me?”

  “Yeah, I know you’re a demon,” said Ed, roughly taking Erasmus’ other arm. “Like that’s a big surprise.”

  “I see.” He narrowed his eyes at Ed but didn’t fight as we pulled him to his feet. With two of us, we were able to make better speed.

  We threaded through the woods at a good trot. The moonlight blazed a path for us. I looked back over my shoulder. The Draugr still followed, but they seemed to be slowing down, falling back. It wasn’t the moon after all that brightened our path, but the morning sky, filling the spaces between the trees with a rose-hued glow.