Everyone watched in shock; the surprise on their faces made Wanda realise that in a typical fight with demons, such amounts of arrows were probably futile to the beast they were fired at.
The demon no longer walked to get to them, it leapt, and in a second, it covered the space left between it and the Vitrians. Before its landing, Petter and Bathe looked at each other quickly and brought out their Praying Méndez. Becky saw them and promptly brought her's out too. The other Vitrians raised the bows in their hands, but Wanda could hear the anxiety in their voices. They weren't sure how to stop the creature.
The creature landed with a loud thud on the ground. Wanda experienced a bout of the jitters as it landed. The instant it saw the Méndez shining, it held back and turned its head away.
“We bind you,” Bathe shouted. Both Bathe and Petter raised their Méndez up high and stood in confidence. “You would not cross this place, nor shall you touch Wanda Troms or anyone here. Go back to the abyss.” Bathe raised his voice as he shouted.
The Méndez in Petter and Bathe's hands were shining bright. Bathe's glowing heavily, much more than it did two days before. The creature covered its face from the divine light. Before it could do anything, another four arrows were buried into its body. It didn't move its hand from its face, but it took a step back, which for the first time, brought hope to everyone.
Just then, they saw people dropping off by the mountainside to the road they were on before. The people were dressed in black. They had masks on, covering their faces like ninjas, and all they wore were black in colour. The outfit they wore covered their necks down to their legs. Seeing them in the distance, Wanda remembered the person on the bike on the way to the Fortress before the grayish-white demon attacked.
“The rebels are here,” someone said.
“Four of you, keep them engaged.” Bathe looked towards the four adults left with them. “We would figure out what to do with this creature.”
“Shouldn't the demon have disappeared by now,” Becky said, and Wanda turned to see her as the other four Vitrians walked back towards the road. Wanda saw Becky's Méndez; it had a feeble glow. It wasn't bright, which revealed that Becky had not been praying adequately.
“Yes,” Petter added. “Why is the demon not disappearing?”
“I cannot,” the demon spoke, and again it startled them all. This was not a grunt or a roar. It was a voice, a clear human voice. “For the Abyss is not my home.”
All the Vitrians froze in deep shock. They couldn't believe what was unfolding; the supernatural light they were looking at was supposed to be harmful to demons but obviously not to this one.
The voice sounded familiar to Wanda, like a voice she'd heard before. She tried to concentrate, but the apprehension around overwhelmed her thoughts.
To their horror, the creature lowered its hand, and they knew it was now looking directly into the light. Wanda could see the shock in Bathe's face as he became perplexed, wondering what exactly they were dealing with.
The creature grabbed the Méndez; it closed its two hands, one on each Méndez. With its hands on them, the Méndez produced a sound like a wet cloth quenching the heat on hot metal. A tiny flicker of smoke erupted from both Méndez as the light in them went out.
“And your praying is very weak.” The creature finished its sentence.
Instantly Bathe, and Petter took their hands off the Méndez as the demon crushed them with ease by squeezing its fingers tight. The creature's eyes were now deep red and worrisome to Wanda. Wanda wasn't sure if it was because the demon looked directly into the light from the Méndez or if it was a new level of resentment towards them, whichever it was she knew it was on a new level of anger - to kill.
In a moment, Bathe had two weapons in his hands. They were both burning bright; the tips of the machete shone brightly.
“Petter, Becky,” Bathe called in a rush, “drive Wanda away as fast as you can.
The demon turned towards Petter immediately. Wanda was expecting it to hit Petter, knowing that Petter was supposed to drive her away, but it didn't. It walked past him and hit the bonnet of the car so hard the bonnet caved in instantly.
“Nooooo,” Bathe shouted out of the blue; for a second, Wanda thought the shout was about the car, then she saw Becky jumping high behind the demon. She stuck her Méndez into the creature's body.
In a sudden reflex action, the demon turned instantly and hit Becky off so hard she flew away, and her body hit the ground very hard. She lay motionless immediately.
Before it turned to Bathe was on it, he swung the first knife with force and cut the creature in the back.
“Go, Petter – now!” Bathe shouted as the creature turned to face Bathe.
Bathe swung in the air as the creature moved. He held on to the knife that was yet stuck in the creature's back. He balanced himself and struck with the second knife, but because the creature was still moving, the impact wasn't as strong as the first.
Petter and Wanda rushed into the car. Petter, who was in the driver seat, gassed the engine quickly. The engine grumbled but started; the heavy blow on the bonnet almost destroyed it. Petter accelerated and moved straight to top speed.
“Petter stop, stop,” Wanda shouted realising they were getting close to the cliff. Petter brought the grunting jeep to a halt in speed. The tyres screeched, rolling backwards against the ground and then stopped about a metre from the edge of the cliff. She and Petter looked at Bathe and the creature. The creature had been able to grab hold of Bathe from its back. After some minutes of struggling to get the knife off, it was able to get hold of Bathe, and the knife Bathe was using to lacerate its back. It held Bathe up high in front of it, holding his wrist tight together in one hand. Its second hand was tight in a fist, its eyes burning with detestation from how Bathe had caused a laceration on its back.
Bathe realising the moment had come, with blood on one side of his face, he looked towards Wanda as he was held up, about half a metre above the ground, and his hands stretched out fully above his head.
From the distance, Wanda could read his thoughts, how sorry he was for her dad's death, for Jason, and for not protecting her enough. She opened the door and hastened out of the car. Petter stretched to pull her back, but he was too late.
“Noooo,” she screamed out loud, and it echoed in the mountains.
The scream resonated so loudly, the creature threw Bathe down gently on one side and leaped like it had been summoned. In the blink of an eye, it landed in front of Wanda. She backed off, breathing heavily in shock until her back hit the car. She wasn't expecting the impetuous appearance of the creature, nor did she expect it to cover the distance so quickly. Bathe flew off her mind as she stood staring at the angered eyes of the beast. She watched as the demon stared, their eyes locked in a short stare, but it seemed rather long in the memory.
She remembered her Praying Méndez and speedily brought it out. Unexpectedly, she became lost in a reverie holding the Méndez and watching the creature's eyes directly. The creature was bleeding in several places in front, and on its back as arrows, Necatus and Becky's Méndez projected out of its body. Watching Wanda, the creature's eyes changed, and it caught Wanda's attention ... they were not the venomous cat-like eyes anymore. She stood in profound astonishment at the eyes she was looking at, shocked to the point that she was out of words.
Petter, who was out of the car now, came to Wanda's aid holding a knife out. He was about to say something when he heard Bathe behind the creature. Bathe ran the distance with all his strength left in him, and with the speed at which he ran, he made one last big strike with a knife and collided with the creature. He fastened the knife in the creature's back with all the force he could garner.
The astonishing speed Bathe was coming with pushed the creature, causing both of them to smash into the jeep. Petter, who was well awake, moved away on time, but Wanda, who was lost in reverie, looking into the eyes of the creature, didn't move.
The force of the push from Bathe
and the weight of the creature moved the jeep. Bathe, Wanda, the vehicle as well as the monster moved towards the edge of the cliff. Both Bathe and the creature stretched out for Wanda when they realised she had been dragged along. They all tumbled over the cliff.
Petter ran to the edge of the cliff and cried out in dreadfulness as he watched them go down the cliff. It was an intense cry of horror; a cry he had never produced before. The scream he let out was that of pain. It was so strong, the veins in his neck popped out and stretched to their length like a string pulled to its breaking limit. He fell on his knees, feeling dejected, watching them topple over and away into the water hundreds of metres below.
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
Chapter 13
Wanda opened her eyes slowly after several dreams that circled mostly on her father's funeral and the unforeseen events that had overwhelmed her life in the last few days.
For a second, the word dead continued to come up in her memory. Dread knocked on her heart as a flashback reminded her of the horrifying expression she had as she flailed her arms in the air falling off the cliff. Her vision through her half-opened eyes was hazy, with flashes of her falling off the cliff. She closed her eyes tight, squinted with her eyelids tightened together, and tried to get the image of the fall out of her head.
She opened her eyes gently, and now with better focus, she studied the place she was in. The room was wooden, built with ancient wood that smelt unusual like it had burnt over and over several times. She wiggled her body gently to see that she was covered with a thick brown blanket. A fireplace in the room was burning with some fresh firewood in it. She gazed at the fireplace, thinking it was where the smell of burnt wood was coming from, but she noticed it was too small to be responsible for the strong burnt wood odour she could perceive.
The room was warm, and she wondered why the fireplace was lit during summer. Studying the wall, Wanda realised that the wood that formed the walls was burnt like the place had been burnt down recently by heavy fire. Severe wood burning was evident in most parts of the walls she turned to look at. Some of the burnt wood had been painted over to make it look better.
A door opened, and someone stepped in. Wanda clutched at the blanket, covering her tightly, frightened of who or what it might be. The rebels and how they wanted her quickly came to mind.
“Why was she not in their prison or a closed-up barricaded room,” she thought in trepidation as the person came closer.
“Ah, I see you're awake,” Wanda heard a male voice.
“The voice'', Wanda thought it was easily noticeable to her. It had kind of tormented her in her dreams and memory multiple times.
She could recognise it at any time and in any situation. She sat up straight, holding on to the blanket that was covering her legs. She wasn't cold or afraid anymore; she was now all hope - wishing beyond all her imaginations that the person would be who she wished it was.
The person walked up slowly towards her; Wanda's heart throbbed furiously at each step he took. She stared uncontrollably at his face as the person squatted in front of her. He raised his hand to touch her forehead. Wanda twitched a little when the hand touched her skin but made no sudden movement to run or object. She only sat up with her mouth slightly open as she looked directly at the person like she had seen a ghost.
“Your fever is gone,” he said, and Wanda only watched him in uttermost shock and bewilderment. Her lips parted slightly open, and her eyes wandering and searching his face to confirm he was real.
“Am ... Am I ... dead?” she enquired after a while, speaking the words out one by one, making the short phrase sound like it was longer than it looked.
“Why?” the other person giggled, “of course not.” He smiled. “Well, perhaps, you are dead. I know that I am not.”
“Eric!” Wanda squealed. His name coming out of her mouth with much more force than she had planned. She didn't know when she let go of the blanket and wrapped her arms around Eric's neck like she had known him for a long time.
She placed her head on his shoulder in the joy that he had survived the attack at school. She had dreamt, deliberated, and wished above all in the last two days of her life that a miracle would save him.
“You're alive.”
“Well,” he shrugged and sounded not too surprised. “Yes I am.” He remembered the last time she saw him. He let her grab him and hold on to him as long as she wanted. He held his hand, uncomfortably up and away from her body. He wasn't too sure where to place his hands. He didn't want to alarm her unexpectedly by touching her.
“The demon attacked you,” she said with her voice shaky. “I thought you were dead.” She let go of him. Her eyes were full of tears of joy. She sniffed a little, trying to control her emotions.
“It's alright - I made it!” Eric winked. His intense blue eyes looked as beautiful as she could remember them. She smiled in response, immediately she saw the faint beautiful smile on his face.
“How ... how did you escape the demon?” she asked. “You said it was sent to fetch me.”
“Well,” his lips twitched and quickly shaped a smile. The smile was mesmerizing to Wanda. She smiled in return, unable to control her feelings. She stared at his well-formed facial structure, reminiscing on how he looked, the few times she had seen him on her school’s premises. He looked even more handsome now that he was at close range and all cleaned up. She remembered how drawn to him she was the day he came to rescue her. He looked rough, probably from running all over the place but was very attractive to her. She recalled the warmth she felt on the inside and how she blushed even with the pandemonium of the demon’s attack at school.
“The demon didn't come for me,” he explained, cutting her off. “Demons don't waste time on what is not their target. They're not like humans that get distracted easily. By the time you were gone, its work was more or less done.”
Remembering his heroic nature – how he rushed to her aid although she had thought initially that he was the demon, Wanda's lips twitched. She became blissed out as she stared uncontrollably and affectionately at him. Unintentionally, she moved her head closer to his, leaving only a finger length space between their lips as their nose almost touched. He didn't pull back; Wanda started fidgeting a little and quickly placed her hands on her laps.
She could hear him breathing now. He smelled sweet and fresh. Wanda reckoned that he must have stepped out of the shower not too long before then. She peered at him and blinked uncontrollably.
She knew she'd never felt like this before. She was tired and felt weak, but she knew it wasn't the weakness or tiredness that drew her close and blushing. This was different, totally different from the other day when she was with Petter and wanted Petter to hold her in his arms because of how overwhelmed she felt by everything happening around her. Here, the memory of all she felt before was gone.
Eric cleared his throat, quickly tilting his head slightly to the side. Wanda followed and turned her head to the opposite side. She knew it was too late; there was nothing she could hide. She knew he had noticed she was blushing and easily understood she was pressing for a kiss.
“Sorry, I was staring,” he said and got up.
“No, I was the one doing the staring,” Wanda replied almost immediately, impressed that he was taking responsibility for something that he hadn't even done.
“I had to set the fireplace up because it gets cold here at night.”
Wanda took the blanket on her laps off totally to realise she was still dressed in the same clothes she wore to the battle. Her clothes were dry but dry in a stiff manner that showed they had been wet when she was placed on the sofa.
“The Battle, the rebels,” she thought out loud as the flood of issues around her began to come back to her memory.
Eric turned at the same moment from the fireplace he had walked up to so he could adjust the woods. Wanda looked up, and their eyes met. In haste. she got up.
“Who are you? Are you one of the rebels?”
> Eric smiled deeply. There was no reaction from him, so Wanda didn't know if he was annoyed by her utterance or not.
“I see you're now more alert,” he replied. “A moment back there, I wondered if you had lost your memory because I had thought that – ‘Who are you?’ – should have been one of your first questions.”
Wanda wanted to defend the reason why she hadn't asked the question first, but her lips only quivered. She knew she had no good response; she had been overwhelmed by seeing him, and with that, thoughts of the rebels, the battle, and her fall from the cliff left her memory.
“No, I'm not with these rebels that you speak of; neither can I deny that I am part of them.”
Wanda frowned, wondering what he was talking about. She shook her head in confusion, trying to understand him. “So, you know about the rebels?”
“Well,” he paused, bent down, and adjusted the burning woods, which seemed to be producing more fire than necessary. “I know the other Vitrians in the Fortress call them that.”
“You know the Vitrians exists?” Wanda was astonished and instantly felt stupid. “Of course, he does. He uses their fighting tools– idiot,” she thought to herself.
“Yes,” Eric answered as calmly as he could. He looked at her, wondering if she must be really naive but said nothing. He stood up and dusted his hands. Like it was not a big issue, he looked away from Wanda and walked to the other end of the L-shaped living area. Wanda followed hastily and saw that there was a small wooden dining table at the other corner. Nothing was on the table, but a box, a wooden box – exactly like the wooden one her mum showed her and told her belonged to her father.
“Where did you get that box from?” she demanded. Her heartbeat was rapid, her thoughts were racing, and her head was filled with a thousand questions, flashing back and forth as she spoke.
“It belongs to me,” Eric answered.
“No, it belongs to my father,” Wanda corrected.
As the discussion was a waste of time, Eric dropped his shoulders, seemingly frustrated and not knowing how to explain.
The Healing Mendez (Vitrian Secrets, #1) Page 16
