“Protect the twins!” Charlie cried. He ran forward just as a witch with brownish gray hair brought her scythe down, aiming for Lisa. He let out a battle cry, raising Loch’s spear—his spear—to block the witch’s blow.
No one would die on his watch today.
Charlie pushed with his spear, sending the witch back enough to use the blunt iron end to batter another enemy coming from his right. The iron ball hissed on impact.
Behind him, Charlie heard S.M.U.G.G.’s bellowing fire as salt grapeshot tore into the advancing witches. He and Darcy stood next to Nash, ready to slay any witch that got through his salt barrage as the twins wrestled the Sagemistress into further submission.
Despite the danger of salt, the witches pressed forward, intent on releasing their mistress. Several fell by the second, though Nash’s gun kept them at bay.
“STOP!” cried the Sagemistress.
The witches flew back, letting S.M.U.G.G.’s fire fall short. Charlie placed a hand on Nash’s shoulder, signaling for him to wait.
“That’s enough,” said the Sagemistress, panting. The twin’s bonds singed her flesh. “Leave the island.”
All five Hunters stared at her, dumbfounded.
“Just like that?” said Darcy.
The Sagemistress scowled between the twins. “The Prince is a fool. I will not watch my coven destroyed when he refuses my counsel. Go home now, or go to your death. Either way, we will not stop you.”
The twins looked at Charlie. He nodded.
“Drag her to the water.”
“What?” cried the Sagemistress. “I’ve given you what you wanted, now let me go!”
“We will, as soon as we’re off this island.”
“We’re not exactly idiots, you know,” Darcy threw in, for good measure.
The entire coven stiffened as their leader was dragged over the ground, back toward the trees. They began to inch forward, but the Sagemistress shouted at them in a harsh language none of the Hunters recognized. The witches all took steps back and, with some hesitation, threw their blades into the ground. They all turned and flew into the woods.
“Get it over with,” said the Sagemistress through clenched teeth. They moved backward, Charlie, Nash, and Darcy forming a circle around the twins.
“Sorry,” muttered Liev as the Sagemistress’ head bumped into a tree.
The group of five dragged their prisoner through the woods, sweating as figures flitted through the trees, just within sight. That they were being watched was an understatement. Charlie could see dark, hateful magic dancing in the air, just waiting to attack him and the others. He was unsure if the witches were holding back their own curses or if the Sagemistress was.
Nash slipped, stepping shin deep in water. Charlie dropped his spear and pulled him back, fearing what was in the water—leaving Darcy alone to guard the twins.
They froze, expecting the witches to jump from the trees and kill them.
The Sagemistress chuckled madly. “Do you think so little of us?”
Charlie ignored her, staring over the waters. “Call the ferryman.”
“Very well. Kerinnon! These children wish passage of your river!”
Materializing as if he had only been passing through a heavy fog, the ferryman appeared at the riverbank. “YES, SAGEMISTRESS. YOU SHOULD KNOW, YOUR MASTER IS NOT AT ALL PLEASED.”
The witch snorted.
“Lisa,” said Charlie, “could I ask—?”
“No problem. Darcy, can you get my other earring?”
Like a delicate game of operation, Darcy carefully edged between the twins, Charlie, and the Sagemistress to remove Lisa’s other earring. She and Nash hopped onboard the ferryman’s vessel, giving the ferryman his due and helping the twins aboard. They let go of the witch as they got in, but maintained her bonds. Charlie climbed up last, sure that they were safe.
“So what’s it to be, boy?” the Sagemistress asked, eyeing them hatefully from the ground. “Do you return home now, or make your way further to that death that haunts you every night when you close your eyes?”
“What’s she talking about?” asked Darcy.
“We go forward,” said Charlie. “There’s no going back. Kerinnon, take us there.” He pointed to a small mountain that stood farther into the Otherworld.
Kerinnon nodded. “VERY WELL, PASSENGER.”
The ferryman set his macabre vessel to motion, angling downstream. The twins kept the Sagemistress incapacitated for as long as they could. When they felt they could no longer hold the energy they released her—panting. She spat, pointing a dirty, crooked talon at them.
“You go to face the prince, and—I swear it is the truth!—one of you will die. I have seen it. So has the boy you look to as your leader. I warned you, just as I warned the woman who came before you. Remember, children. I warned you.”
Her voice drifted away as Witch Island disappeared into the mist.
The Sagemistress watched the five human fledglings ferried away by Kerinnon, her blue eyes still aflame with anger. But still, despite the pain in her arms and legs, she had to smile.
These fledglings were the ones. They were strong enough, clever enough…perhaps even lucky enough.
She felt the Prince begin poking around inside her mind. Vindictively, the Sagemistress spat out a dozen curses in the ancient language that would keep the varcolac’s long nose out of places where it should not be snooping around. She heard him cursing in his Great Hall in Blood Castle before fading away completely. Her grin became even more vindictive.
The Sagemistress watched as the Monster Hunters were swallowed by the mist over the foul river, the same which the varcolac used to imprison her coven. How much longer would they wait now?
She turned, retreating to the woods.
“Is it true?” asked Darcy, looking at Charlie—they all were looking at Charlie. “Have you seen one of us die?”
Charlie looked from the stony face of Wyvern’s Peak, to his shoes, and back again.
“Yeah.” He turned to face them. “It was only a nightmare.”
“You should know,” cried Lisa in frustration, “after all we’ve been through, even nightmares should be taken seriously!”
“I do take it seriously!” Charlie countered. “But what would you have wanted me to do? I didn’t see who it was. I tried to, but I couldn’t. Should I have warned you all that one of you might die? You already knew that! I already knew that!”
The boat came to a jerking halt. Lisa stormed off the boat, followed more placidly by the others. Kerinnon watched them exit his craft with fiery blue-gray eyes, then turned without a word and rowed off into oblivion.
“Listen, we’ve already talked about this,” Charlie said. He was pleading more with himself, tears coating his red eyes. “We all knew the risk. We all know what will happen if we don’t take that risk.”
No one spoke, so Charlie went on, looking to them all in turn.
“If any of you want to leave, go back home, I won’t stop you. No one will stop you.”
Nobody moved.
“I don’t want to be here anymore than you do. But there’s something I have to do, and that’s to make sure the varcolac doesn’t get the chance to cross over into our world.”
Charlie looked at them all pleadingly, then turned and began to climb up to the top of Wyvern’s Peak.
It was a silent climb, filled only with sounds of exertion and the occasional slipping of feet and loose rocks tumbling. They were so immersed with the events that had just transpired they forgot all about the danger of what lay ahead. For it was, after all, called Wyvern’s Peak. The twins, at least, should have been wary of the landmark’s draconic christening.
But even when they reached the top and might have been concerned at the ominous cave that stood to the right at the top of the hill, just shaded by some thick trees and foliage, they were again distracted. Because, on Wyvern’s Peak, they could see the entire half of the O
therworld they had yet to cross. And that side of the Otherworld was crawling with monsters.
Giant tarantulas, trolls, manticores, boggarts, nelapsi, harpies…hundreds upon hundreds of monsters, standing in an army, gathered for what looked to be a war invasion into another country. Pacing behind the monsters were giant wolves, hellhounds twice the size of horses—gray, black, white, and brown, all prowling in anticipation. And behind it all, surrounded by a filthy black moat, stood the black fortress.
Blood Castle.
The Monster Hunters stood speechless, terrified, and unable to move.
Darcy sat down abruptly. “How are we going get through that?”
No one answered. There was tension in the air as the Hunters felt eyes on them. The hair on the back of their necks rose sharply, causing the sensation of little sticking pins all the way down their arms and backs. Someone, or something, was watching them.
Until now, they had forgotten where they were: Wyvern’s Peak. Presumably home to that nasty type of dragon, which the twins knew liked to snack on large elephants. They did not share the trivia with the others.
Any conflict with a dragon, or any such sudden or loud movements on top of the peak, would alert the monsters below. And then everything they had struggled through would come to a premature, futile, and rapid end.
Then the bushes at the mouth of the cave rustled, and the trees shook a little. Army or no army below, the Hunters scrambled for their weapons. But they were still too ravaged by the day’s events, and they fumbled with their trigger fingers.
Which was a good thing.
The Chief of Assistants, Dräng, came striding out from the bushes. Suddenly coming to an abrupt and fearful halt, Dräng crouched and covered his head with bony fingers, expecting to be blasted to bits for appearing before the Monster Hunters. He could not only see, but feel their anger, shock, and unbridled astonishment.
Darcy, having been bit by the little monster, was especially sour. “You!”
“Oh, good,” said Liev. “I thought it was a dragon.”
He had already gotten his fill of dragons.
Ignoring him, Darcy raised her crossbow and aimed at the little monster.
“Please, no! Wait! If you only wait, I can show you. I have a heart of change, am only here to serve you, help you! Be a friend.”
“Help us? Help us? You marked us! You marked our friends and our family. You’re the Dark Prince’s assistant!”
Charlie stepped in and restrained Darcy, along with the others.
“Hang on! There’s something different about him. I don’t know why, but I feel he may be here to actually help us.”
Nash stepped in. “You’ve got to be kidding me. We have no reason to trust him.”
“Nash, wait! Tell me, Dräng, you must have some proof.” Charlie just knew something was different here. “Give us one reason we should believe you and let you live.”
“Because he’s telling the truth!” came a rusty voice breaking through the entangled shrubs and twisted vines. “You really should listen to what he has to say.”
The owner of the rusty voice emerged from the foliage, rabbit foot and all.
Chapter 11: Thrice Death
The bushes shuddered to release one Fish McCollum. A second later, one Wardley Dink fell out.
“I am so sick and dang-blasted tired of these ridiculous woods around here. Can’t take a single step without falling in something that stinks or getting tied up in vines from the belly of Hell itself! Ain’t never seen so many scraggly weeds!”
“Fish! Dink!” cried Nash. He looked at the Chief of Assistants, confused. “You?”
“Yes, me, now please believe and do not execute,” he said, worriedly slicing his finger across his neck.
“Your little friend here told us you were in trouble,” said Fish. “He helped us into this world. Now we’re here to help you.”
Fish was covered in all sorts of charms. He wore his usual rabbit foot necklace, but was also now wrapped in two strands of garlic, wearing rosary beads and a bracelet of painted pebbles. His iron horseshoe hung from the left pants pocket. Anyone else would have looked ridiculous, but with the intense, honest expression Fish wore—not to mention the hunting rifle, silver dagger, and two ammo belts he carried—it looked dead serious.
Dink, on the other hand, had chosen a simpler get-up. He carried a shotgun. And a fishing pole.
Nash nodded to the field of monsters. “We could sure use the help.”
Fish and Dink looked critically over the battlefield.
“Right,” said Dink. “You all take the ones on the right. I got the ones on the left.”
Darcy looked at him out of the corner of her eye. “I don’t think that would work, Dink.”
“It could,” Liev whispered, grinning.
“And, that fishing pole might not do you any good down there.”
“Well, you know,” Dink said, holding up his fishing pole proudly, “I thought, since we were coming to another world and all, I’d check out what type of fishin’ they got here. Got to be thinking about the important things in life. You’ll see when you get old and crusty like me.”
Charlie gave a grim chuckle, surveying the battlefield. “You don’t want what’s in the water here, Dink.”
As the others discussed the best approach to a battle—there was no way around it—Darcy set herself down on a small boulder a little ways from the group. Usually, she would have offered her opinion, whether it was wanted or not. But right now, she was thinking over what the witch had said about her mother. She tinkered with her necklace nervously, when suddenly she had an idea.
Dräng raised his scrawny arm to speak, but Lisa had already started to ask a question.
“How many do you think you could take out with your stomping from here?” she said.
“From here?” asked Nash. “None. It doesn’t reach that far. But if I were closer…I don’t know. I haven’t had a lot of opportunity to test it.”
“I could probably do a couple hundred in,” said Liev, holding up his grenade launcher.
Purple Monster, Yellow monster, Brown monster, three, thought Darcy, Why are you all jumping on my bed? That part was easy enough to figure out, wasn’t it? Purple, yellow, brown.
“But then they would know we were here,” Charlie was saying.
“That might actually be a good thing,” Fish said. “They would rush up here, and we’d be fighting on the higher ground.”
Blue monster, Black monster, Purple monster, see, now I am stomping on all of your heads. It has to be offensive, thought Darcy. Wouldn’t it be? Stomping on heads sounds offensive.
Charlie nodded, agreeing with Fish. “We’d have a good defensive position on the peak.”
Liev enthusiastically cocked the launcher. “Just tell me when to shoot.”
Lisa rolled her eyes.
Charlie was still thinking. “Hang on. Darcy, Lisa, when Liev fires off the first round, be ready to pick off the front line coming for us. You too, Nash.”
“I’ll be ready,” Nash said. He activated the air pressure from S.M.U.G.G.’s vest.
“Good.” Charlie looked at Fish and Dink. “I don’t know what regular guns will do against monsters, but I guess it can’t hurt our chances.”
“You don’t got to worry about us,” said Dink. “Fish set us up somethin’ special.”
“Silver buckshot,” Fish said, pointing his thumb at Dink’s shotgun. “And I’ve got my own bullets. My Da used to tell me stories of his homeland. Taught me how to protect myself well enough.”
“That’s great,” said Charlie, ignoring Dräng, who was still trying to speak. “Really, great. Alright everyone, are you ready? Darcy, did you hear? Darcy?”
But Darcy wasn’t listening. She was thumbing her necklace. And walking downhill.
“Darcy! What are you doing?”
Darcy was, in fact, pressing the gems on her necklace according to the more macabre nursery rhy
me her mother used to sing. She was not, however, listening to the others as they shouted at her. A few of the monsters noticed her, and a shudder of activity rippled over the battlefield.
Then Darcy stopped and, where she stood, pressed the last gem—purple—holding the necklace away from herself, pointing the hole out toward the closest of the monsters. There was a loud sound—a sound like a Boeing 747 traveling right through the monsters—as a beam of white light flew through the battlefield. It was a large beam, engulfing most of the monsters gathered in the middle of the field.
Everyone felt a chill run up their arms and legs as Darcy’s necklace seemed to suck life itself out of the air. Charlie gasped, seeing the powerful, dark burst of purple magic inside the light.
And then it stopped. The light faded, revealing an army of confused, somewhat irritated monsters. Nothing had happened to any of them, except for becoming aware of the Hunters on Wyvern’s Peak.
Darcy felt the blood drain from her face and limbs. She was wrong. That nursery rhyme had not been for attack. What on earth was a noisy beam of light useful for? Now she was the main target of hundreds of bloodthirsty creatures. Darcy kicked herself mentally. What had she been thinking? She backed away, trembling like a leaf in a summer storm.
Before she could get very far, the nearest monster, a hideous centaur with one red eye and no skin to cover its pulsating muscles and organs, turned to a monster on its left, a green troll with a curtain of ragged hair. The hideous centaur took the troll by its hair, threw it to the ground, and stomped on the troll’s head with a slimy hoof.
“Well,” said Liev, watching from Wyvern’s Peak. “That was unexpected.”
Dink nodded with raised eyebrows. “Suppose they didn’t like each other very much, then.”
It did not stop there. Another monster started to stomp on the troll’s head, and then another stomped on the centaur’s head—a truly unpleasant sight, considering its lack of skin.
Large, deadly scuffles broke out in the center of the monster army. Any being that had been touched by the light from Darcy’s necklace battled viciously under some spell—their only wish seemingly to stomp on the heads nearest to them. The effect was widespread and, well…unsightly.
Charlie Sullivan and the Monster Hunters: The Varcolac's Diary Page 18
