by L.A. Jones
Chapter Twenty-Eight
As Aradia hurried out to the meeting place, she concluded that of all the bad ideas she’d had in her life, meeting a murderer in an abandoned manor completely isolated from town in the middle of the night had to be the worst. However, if Dereck was willing to kill her parents instead of her, she decided that she did not really have much of a choice.
Breathe, Rai, she told herself. This won’t be like last time. You’re ready, and you know what you’re facing. You’re calm. You’re in control. She summoned a fireball. The flame came to her and obeyed her command.
Of course, you’re also going in wounded, you’re on his home turf, and you know from experience that he can kick your ass. The flame fizzled out.
It did not take her long to find her destination. What slowed her down was seeing to it that Roy and Dax wouldn’t follow her. She’d intentionally doubled back on her path, taken a detour along a stream, and abandoned her jacket in the woods to keep them from tracking her readily.
She stared up at the dark and crumbling manor looming over her. Aradia sighed as she thought to herself, could this situation get any more frightening? As if God, or more likely the other guy, had heard her, cold, fat raindrops started to drip onto Aradia.
“Of course,” she said aloud and with a shrug of her shoulders.
She tried extending her presence into the structure to see if she could get an idea of what she was walking into. She had no luck. She had to connect to the warmth of a place, and this was a cold, dead house.
She then braced herself for whatever was going to happen, pushed the double doors open, and let herself into the house confident in the knowledge that whatever the outcome, her family at least would be safe.
It reeked of decay, and little mice scampered around like shoppers at the mall on Black Friday. It was dark and chilly, causing Aradia to shiver all up and down her battered spine. Then again, considering what she was about to face, maybe the cold had nothing to do with the shivers.
“You alone?” Dereck’s loud voice boomed from out of nowhere.
Aradia whipped around, looking the entire room over, and finally found Dereck at the top of a long, winding staircase.
“What do you think?” asked Aradia.
Dereck was silent as he slowly descended the staircase. Aradia gathered her courage and asked, “So? I have kept my end of the bargain, will you keep yours?”
“As I said earlier, I have no reason to kill your parents. I will not harm them.”
“Then my parents are safe!” said Aradia, thankful despite the severity of her situation.
“Yes, they might be,” said Dereck, shifting into his werewolf form again. “But you sure as hell are not!”
With the speed and power of a tornado, Dereck leapt from the staircase towards Aradia. He landed a few feet in front of her, bounded once, and tackled her. She was ready and rolled with him. They wrestled and she ended up pinned, Dereck’s paw-like hands wrapped around her throat. He started to squeeze.
She closed her eyes, and in spite of Dereck crushing her windpipe so strongly that her face was beginning to turn blue, she calmed herself. You tried it that way once, she said. You won’t win fighting him hand to hand. Aradia managed to smile.
Dereck’s face became a mask of confusion only to change to pain when Aradia wrapped her own hands around his throat and summoned her flame. She smelled burning fur and flesh. He howled in agony, but still held her throat.
She kneed him in his gut and pulled him close enough to head-butt him. His grip faltered and she gasped a deep breath. Following through on her combo attack, she rolled him off of her, sprang to her feet, and kicked him sharply in the face.
“You really should have taken my parents hostage. That way I might have wanted to hold back!”
She clasped her hands together like a praying mantis, and from her clasped hands emerged a huge whip of flame.
Dereck scrambled to his feet. On all fours he stalked a circle around Aradia, just outside her whip’s reach. His cockiness was gone.
Aradia cracking the fire whip. He wasn’t sure of what he was seeing, or if it were even real. He pounced and came down at her from a high arc, attacking her from above. She whipped at him with her flame construct, lashing him across the torso from left shoulder to right hip. He screeched in pain and completely failed on his landing, coming down in a heavy thud which snapped the decrepit old floorboards.
“Maybe coming here wasn’t the dumbest thing I’ve ever done!” Aradia chuckled, cracking the whip again, this time across his back.
Dereck ran towards the front door.
Aradia, however, had other ideas.
“Oh hells to the no you don’t!” she shouted, stamping her foot on the floor. The doors glossed over and became immovable. Dereck pried at the handles, but they didn’t even shake on their ancient old hinges.
Aradia smiled as she said, “Now this is when it gets good.”
It had been almost impossible for Dax and Roy to find Aradia, but once they noted the flashes and loud booms coming from the manor on Warlock Hill, it definitely narrowed the search. They raced through the forest and Roy smashed himself into one of the manor’s old front doors which, to his surprise, did not crash open.
Picking himself up, he and Dax looked at one another.
Dax proposed, “Window?”
Roy nodded.
In unison the two jumped and crashed through their respective window panes. Dax was careful to use his arms to protect his heart from any wayward shards of wood his arrival might have flung about.
The duo found Aradia and Dereck battling on the second floor.
Dereck tried dodging the fireballs Aradia threw at him, and in return, she tried to avoid him whenever he lunged or swiped at her for an attack.
“I am going to rip you to shreds and feed what is left of you to pigeons!” he threatened.
Aradia sighed as she swung herself around a huge pillar and said, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but so far you have yet to hurt me! And between you and me, I don't think you ever will!”
Dereck roared as he slashed his claws at her, but Aradia ducked every blow.
“Hold still dammit!” he finally cried out.
“Now what fun would that be?”
He furiously slashed as quickly as he could while Aradia tried to dodge the blow again.
Aradia didn’t know whether he lured her to overextend herself or if she had merely gotten overconfident, but either way, his claws finally made contact. His hand managed to scrape against Aradia's belly. The wound was not deep, but it was painful, and again there was much blood.
Aradia cried out in pain, and the fireball she was holding dissipated. Dereck grinned wickedly as she dropped to her knees. He moved in for the kill.
He moved in for the kill, only to be sacked from the side by another werewolf. Roy and Dereck rolled over one another, Roy swiping and biting at him more ferociously than he’d ever attacked anything. Dereck was larger, stronger, and more experienced than Roy. He was also injured, tired, and not nearly as incensed.
Still, even with the field somewhat leveled, experience won out over youth. Dereck got Roy on his back, and opened his mouth to bite out the younger werewolf’s throat. Aradia summoned a fireball to stop, but the pain from her stomach was too great, and she couldn’t.
“Nooo!” Aradia cried out.
Time seemed to freeze. She couldn’t believe what was happening. She’d come here to protect her loved ones, and now she was going to be responsible for the death of a loved one. She realized in that instant that she didn’t really know for sure how she felt about Dax or Roy, but she loved them both in some capacity, and she couldn’t lose either of them.
Wonderfully, she didn’t have to.
Dax had climbed to the rafters above the pair and crept through the darkness where Aradia and the werewolves hadn’t noticed him. Now he struck, like a rock spider snatching its prey. He dropped himself from the rafters and land
ed on the elder werewolf’s back. He used an old, rusty fireplace shovel as a gag, forcing it crosswise into the wolf’s gaping maw, keeping him from closing his jaws.
Then he did some biting of his own, flicking out his fangs and sinking them deeply into the wolf’s throat.
Dereck screamed, releasing his hold on Roy and clawing at Dax as he had earlier at Aradia. Unlike Aradia, though, his scratches and cuts had little effect.
Dax struck again and again, like a tiger rattlesnake or a black mamba. Now it was Dereck’s blood flowing freely.
His injuries were mounting rapidly, and his strength was waning. Soon he was no longer even swiping at Dax. The large werewolf fell to his knees.
“Dax,” Aradia said. Still Dax mounted his assault. “Dax!”
He stopped and looked at her, mouth and chin dripping with werewolf blood.
“That’s enough,” she said. He tilted his head curiously. Roy, too, who was crouched and ready to strike, seemed uncertain of her meaning. “He’s incapacitated.”
“Aradia,” Dax warned, but she only shushed him and waved him back. He complied.
Dereck, still in his wolf form, managed to hold himself up, albeit unsteadily, on his knees. He was burned, bruised, bleeding, and broken.
His mouth opened and closed several times. She wasn’t sure if he was trying to speak, or attempting in vain to bite her. Finally, he spat out, “What the hell are you, you crazy bitch?”
At this, Aradia smirked while balling her hand into a fist.
“I’ll give you a hint,” she stage whispered. “You’re only one letter off!”
Then she clocked him. He fell over backwards, finally, mercifully unconscious.
