As we walk along past the gory spectacle, there are no more dead bodies, no more spilled blood, and all that remains is beautiful country. We listen to the songs of radiant birds that fly about. The birds seem to feel safe enough to tweet and trill. It’s a relief—it means there are no threats here, or it appears that way. I’m sure it won’t last, so I’ll enjoy it while it does.
With the bright yellow road under my silver clad feet, I take in the beautiful scene. The lovely flowers have become so thick they carpet the ground. A polychromy of fat blossoms the size of saucers sway beside enormous clusters of scarlet poppies which are so brilliant they dazzle my eyes. There is nothing this colorful in the gray Kansas landscape, and I am reminded to be careful what I wish for. But I am also grateful for having a moment’s peace in such a beautiful place. A small part of me feels like this is my wish fulfilled, and I am grateful for the brief moment where there is no terrible consequence.
“Aren’t they pretty?” I say as I breathe in the spicy scent of the bright flowers.
“I suppose so,” answers Ardie. “When I have brains to eat, I shall like them better. As usual, it’s all I can think of.”
“If I had a heart, I’d love them too,” adds Nick.
“I always liked flowers,” says the Werelion. “They seem so helpless and frail. But there are none in the forest so bright as these. And there doesn’t even seem to be any blood or carcasses around.”
“I was thinking the same thing. It’s a nice relief.”
“It is,” Werelion agrees.
At least I’m not alone in appreciating the picturesque scene that surrounds us, and it appears to be free of blood stains. Vampires must not like flowers too much.
We walk a little further and find ourselves surrounded by more and more of the big scarlet poppies, and fewer and fewer of the other flowers. Rich cerise cascades over the vista, and the spicy aroma makes it a full body experience. With a scent so strong, I can taste the spiciness on my tongue, feel it on my skin in the light breeze as it blankets me in its fragrance. A carnelian feast for the senses—it’s hypnotizing.
Amid a vast poppy meadow where scarlet blooms dance in the breeze for miles, red is all there is. The scent is so heavy it intoxicates. Warm redolence lulls me into a state so relaxed, all I can do is lay down amongst the blooms and ride the lush vermilion rapture to a dreamscape of ripe red cherries and warm sweet spices and languid bliss. My eyelids grow so heavy I can’t say a word as I plop down amongst the flowers and fall back into their soft bed.
“We must get back to the road before dark,” Nick says, yawning. But I can’t speak. I can’t stand either. Instead, in swirls of carmine and crimson and incarnadine exultation, I sleep.
12
The Queen of the Wererats
I’m gelatinous goo. My brain is a goopy glop and my lips are floppy and burbly. I’m in a bubble going in a loopty loop, spinning. Superglue anvils have become my eyelids and my tongue is too tired and flappy to talk.
I try to pry open my eyes, but the lethargy is so intense it nauseates me. Dim fog fills my vision, but after a moment, my sight comes into focus. Bronze and brown color the sky. Dark jagged shadows paint the rough texture of the clouds. No, not clouds—the sky is dirt illuminated by golden lamplight.
Where am I?
Alarmed, I shoot to my feet, my heart pounding as hundreds of rat people close in on me. Shifters. Perhaps they were munchkins once because they are small, with rat heads and rat tails. In armor that looks like it’s made from the exoskeletons of giant bugs, they appear to be a shifter army. Straightaway, my boots cover me in armor and a long metal whip grows from my hand. I crack it, sending them scurrying back.
“Dorothy!” I hear Nick say behind me and I turn my head to see him hurrying toward me from further down the tunnel. “They are helping us. They are friends.”
When I take them in, so many filling the tunnels that encircle the junction I stand in, I see the hundreds of shifter rat people watching me with sheepish expressions, their beady eyes brimming with hope, and my armor shrinks back into my boots. As they let out a collective breath, Nick closes the gap between us and surprises me with a hug.
“What happened? Where are we?”
“The poppies—they made you fall into a deep sleep. While I ran out, Ardie pulled you and Toto from the field, but the Werelion was too heavy for him. Once I made my way out of the field, into the trees, I had a moment to recover before I saw the Queen of the Wererats running from a feline shifter. I was groggy, but I was still strong enough to drive off the lynx shifter. As a thank you, they brought us into their tunnels to keep us safe and agreed to help us get Werelion out. By some enchantment, they are immune to the effects of the poppies. I’m building a stretcher so they can lift him and bring him to us. Ardie is up there keeping watch, making sure nothing happens to Werelion while I build. If we leave him there too long, he’ll die,” Nick informs me.
“Oh no,” I breathe, worried and astonished at the horror and strangeness of it all.
A female rat shifter emerges from the group wearing a shimmering gold exoskeleton dress with a full skirt that looks as though it’s made of gold beetle backs and luminous insect wings. A matching lucent gold crown sits atop her rat head.
“Dorothy, let me introduce to you her Majesty, the Queen,” Nick says.
Not knowing what the proper etiquette is when you meet a shifter queen, I curtsy. The little queen smiles, amused by what I’m sure is my ineptitude. Even though I’ve never seen a rat smile, I can tell that’s what she’s doing. In a rat sort of way, she’s pretty. With a somewhat human face, she has the head, ears, and nose of a rat. While her body is very ratlike, with rat hands and rat feet, she has breasts and a waist like a human woman.
The wererats that surround us carry what appear to be strings in their tiny hands or in their mouths, many of them climbing up a slope of the tunnel a few feet off from where we stand toward the stretcher Nick has been building.
“The pulleys are here,” the Wererat Queen says to Nick.
He rushes over to the stretcher and fastens the wererats to it using the strings they carry. One end of a string he ties around the midsection of each wererat and the other end he ties to the large platform. Once he’s harnessed the wererats, they pull it forward up the tunnel’s slope. Nick hurries after them and I follow with the Wererat Queen at my side.
The slope leads up into the base of a massive tree trunk thirty yards from the yellow brick road on the opposite side of the poppy field where I last remember passing out. Nick draws the platform with the wererats over to Ardie, who holds Toto in his arms, at the edge of the poppies. Werelion lies in the center of the field, asleep.
“I am sorry our security system harmed you. Most friendlies who come through here use the tunnels,” the Wererat Queen says.
“Security system?”
“Yes, we planted this poppy field to slow predators. Although we cannot escape them all, when they are sluggish it helps. Only friendlies gain entrance into the tunnels. Most predators do not know they exist, and if they do, each entrance has a security system much like this one.”
“There are more tunnels?”
“Throughout the land of Oz along the road of yellow brick. Although you must know where they are to enter. Most friendlies who travel here use the tunnels, for this location is difficult to get to unless you fly as a vampire or a werebird does. Most friendlies who cross the river must use the tunnels.”
“We built a raft, but it didn’t work out too well. We went far off course.”
“I imagine so, for it flows right into Winkie Land—vampire country.”
“Yes, I heard that,” I say with a sigh, grateful we got out of that awful situation even though we stepped right into another awful situation, but that’s life in Oz—one terrible thing after another.
“The Axeman is quite something,” she says as she looks at him with admiration in her beady eyes.
“Yeah.”
�
�He is a fierce fighter. You are lucky to have him along your journey to the City of Emeralds.”
“I am.”
“You must know he cares for you. He held you to him for the first hour while my men gathered materials for the truck. You are a lucky witch.”
“I’m not a witch. Just a girl with witch boots.”
“Ah, I see. You are the one who slew the Vampire Witch of the East. Word of you has traveled throughout the land. I would expect a visit from her sister soon.”
“What?”
Fear worms its way into my chest and takes root. It shouldn’t surprise me someone would want me to pay for killing her, but it does. I hadn’t thought about it. All I’ve thought about is surviving this journey, although it could be moot. We are almost at our destination, and if I can make it to the City of Emeralds without any run-ins with more witches or undead or predatory shifters, then I have nothing to worry about because I’ll be leaving this realm.
“Beware of what may come your way, for she knows you slew her sister.”
“I’m leaving once I get to the City of Emeralds. Gayelette told me the Wizard can send me home.”
“Perhaps he can. If anyone can, it would be him, but if you do not gain protection from the Wizard, expect her to come for you.”
“Great,” I grumble as I watch Ardie hand Toto to Nick and get onto the platform. Right now, I cannot think about what will happen if I don’t get the Wizard to help me, so instead, I turn my attention to Ardie and the stretcher. It’s a lot like a sled led by little shifter rats wearing bug bodies for armor.
Wererats drag Ardie to the place where the Werelion lay asleep. A chuckle escapes me at the sight of Ardie flying on a truck bed drawn by a hundred wererats to the field of poppies. When I turn, I see Nick smiling at me as he approaches with Toto at his feet.
“I will give you two a minute,” she says with a knowing smirk on her rat lips and steps back into the tree trunk to the tunnel below.
“Oh, Dorothy, I was so worried,” Nick says as he comes over and stands beside me.
“Even though I feel out of it, I’m okay. Thanks to you guys.”
“Ardie pulled you and Toto out. I almost did not get out of there myself,” he says, ashamed.
“I’m glad you did,” I say, and he beams his gorgeous smile at me. “The sled thing was your idea, huh?”
“Yes. I am glad you are well, Dorothy,” he says with twinkling, kindhearted eyes.
“Me too,” I laugh.
“The Emerald City is not far. To have lost you now would have been unfortunate.”
“Uh, yeah,” I agree with a huffed laugh. “Did they have those strings on them, or did they find them around here?”
“Oh, those are not strings.”
“What are they?”
“Entrails,” he admits, his eyes crinkling in a slight wince, knowing it will horrify me.
“Of what? Or who?” I ask, afraid to hear the answer.
“A swarm of werebugs. Those strings are their alimentary canals, tubes that go from the mouth to the anus of an insect. An insect’s digestive—”
“Got it,” I say, getting grossed out.
“The wererats were feeding when we returned the Queen to them,” he says, also disgusted. “It is lucky, I suppose, for us that is. And for the Queen we saved from the lynx shifter.”
“I suppose so,” I say, wanting this conversation to finish, not wanting to think about them eating other shifters. If a shifter in its predatory animal form eats another shifter in its animal form, is it still cannibalism? Ugh. I can’t. That’s going on the list of things to never think about.
“Perhaps you should eat,” he says.
“After that conversation I want to say no, but I am starving,” I admit, and he chuckles.
Up against the tunnel wall rests my bag of weapons. He walks over and takes out some food, being very attentive to me, and I appreciate it considering I am still so groggy from the poppies. We eat the last of the venison, giving the scraps to Toto who is awake but also groggy and cuddled up at my feet.
After a while, I see Ardie helping to push the truck the Werelion lies on. Thousands of wererats harnessed with entrails of wereinsects pull Werelion from the field of poppies over to the tunnel. Nick and Toto follow, so I rise to go meet them.
“He’s still alive, but his breathing is shallow,” Ardie says as they drag Werelion down into the tunnels.
The wererats scurry into the lamplit tunnels and Ardie, Nick, Toto, and I follow. When we reach the bottom of the slope, they remove their harnesses of entrails.
“Thank you. You saved his life, and we will be forever grateful,” Nick says.
With a nod of acknowledgement, they scamper away, and the Queen steps forward.
“Axeman, you saved my life. If ever you need us again,” she says to Nick and hands him a whistle, “come out into an open field and call. We shall hear you and come to your aid. You may stay here until the werelion awakes, but since he is a werefeline, we will take our leave,” she says and Nick smiles.
“Thank you for your help,” Nick says.
“You are welcome. Goodbye.”
“Goodbye,” he answers, and the Queen runs into the center of her wererat army.
Worried Toto might run give chase and frighten her, I pick him up and hold him tight to my chest. Even though he seems to know better, thank goodness, I take no chances.
While we wait for Werelion to wake, Nick and I sit beside him on the dirt floor of the tunnel, and Ardie goes off to hunt for his dinner with Toto. For our dinner, Nick and I share the last of the fruit and nuts from my bag. If I were to want to read into what the Queen of the Wererats said, I might think Nick had stronger feelings for me than he does, but it’s clear he was just worried about me while I was asleep, intoxicated by the poppies.
As we watch the Werelion sleep, we say little to each other. After a few minutes pass, I hear laughter echoing from above ground. Boisterous voices laugh and shrill from just outside the tree trunk. If I didn’t know better, I’d think they were shifters entering the tunnels after a long night of partying, but the sun has only just set. This time, I know it’s got to be vampires. The first thing I do is open my bag of weapons and take out two matching wooden stakes, one for each hand, while Nick puts on his helmet and readies himself.
“Come on out, lovelies,” one female voice croons. “Make it easy on yourselves, for I hate dank and musty tunnels.”
When I turn to Nick, he shakes his head no.
“Spells protect these tunnels. Vampires cannot enter,” he whispers.
“Ardie and Toto will come back at any minute. We’re better off dealing with them now,” I say, and he sighs.
“Right,” he grumbles, and we head up the slope to the bottom of the trunk.
A group of about thirteen vampires dressed in that frilly old-fashioned style all the vampires seem to rock with fluffy ruffles and cravats and corsets, take a step toward us as we walk out of the tree.
“Can you explain the outfits please? Why so many ruffles? And the cravats? In case you didn’t realize with the lack of blood flow you’ve got going on, it’s at least eighty degrees out.”
One girl squeals, clapping her hands with a crazed smile. Losing a soul and constant murder must have done a number on her sanity because she looks maniacal, her glassy eyes opened wide in glee.
“Oh, I want her! Mine, mine!” she says giggling as she bounces.
“I want you too you crazy psycho. Come here and get it,” I say and blow her a kiss.
A high-pitched laugh bellows from her, echoing off the trees. The female at the center gets irritated with my bravado, her jaw ticking as her lips press into a firm line. When she narrows her eyes at me, I huff out a laugh at her.
“Hasn’t anyone ever told you not to make such an ugly face? It might freeze that way. Or is it too late for that?”
“We’ll make this quick,” she says as a small, sneering smile takes over her lips.
�
��Boy, do I hope so, because I have places to be tonight,” I say, and she laughs. The others follow her lead and laugh with her.
“I don’t think you will make it,” she returns, and I throw the stake at her with such speed even I don’t see it until it hits her right in her heart and she falls to the ground, dead for good. The twelve other vampires’ eyes widen in shock, their jaws drop, and even I’m surprised because my armor isn’t covering me yet. But that might be a smart thing to do now.
“I almost forgot,” I say, and my boots grow flowing over my body and morphing into my silver-plated armor in an instant.
If I thought they look surprised a second ago, their soulless eyes are bulging now. The psycho one screams, and I throw the other stake straight into her chest. She falls down dead. Like dominoes they hiss and show their fangs, the unearthly color of their reddish eyes twinkling with hate.
They attack, rushing toward us with uncanny speed. Nick throws an axe, and it strikes a charging vampire in the heart. Long silver stakes grow from my fists and I fly to meet them as if gravity means nothing to me. Just as they move at hyper speed, so do I, stabbing these ostentatious vampires in their hearts. Nick is impressive himself, taking out two at a time, beheading them with his swirling axes. Because so many are on me, I kick a few before I stake another, and after I take out five and Nick has taken out four, I see the three I only maimed running away.
As I race after them, my feet pound into the ground. When they take off into the sky, I leap into the air and grab the ankles of the two on the outside. I use them as leverage to lift my feet enough to stake the third in the center. Straight through his back, I kick him with the spike at the tip of my toe. As that one falls to the ground dead and splats, I use my inordinate strength to pull the other two down to my eye level, grab them by their heads, and crack their skulls together so hard they cave in. Knocked out, they both crash into the ground, and I land like a cat between them bending deep at the knee. On my way up to standing, I stab them both through their backs to their hearts. Nick is there, waiting for me.
Dorothy In the Land of Monsters Page 18
