by Brian Harmon
“Not for a while. Sorry.” And indeed, she looked very sorry. She seemed to wilt a little.
“That’s okay. At least we know we don’t have to worry about those two.”
Alicia turned and gestured for them to follow. “The trees will tell me where they are, so we should be able to avoid most of them.”
“That’s awesome,” said Eric. “Very useful. We want to stay away from them.”
“You still haven’t told me what they are,” she reminded them. “They’re not natural.”
“Imps,” replied Holly.
“Really? Are you sure?”
“Del said they were.”
Alicia nodded. That was clearly good enough for her.
“There’re ogres, too. And something else. Something a lot bigger.”
“But how?”
“Del doesn’t know. But we’ve been running into them all night.”
Eric walked behind them, listening. Clearly, Alicia was familiar with the concept of imps and ogres, if not the beasts themselves.
He tried to remember if there had been similar conversations with Poppy and Cierra.
When the imps attacked the Wordsley House, Poppy had known that the smoke pouring off the monster carcasses meant that they were vanishing from this plane of existence. But he wasn’t sure how much she’d known about the creatures besides that fact. And Cierra had only commented that she thought they were a fairy tale.
Somewhere in the forest, another tree crashed to the ground, scattering his thoughts. “How far is it?”
She looked back at him, her eyes washing over him again. “About a mile, probably.”
“That far?”
“We’ll have to go out of our way to stay away from the monsters.”
Eric nodded. “By all means, then. I can live with that.”
Alicia stopped. “What is…?” Her eyes drifted to the right and she stood there, staring off into the darkness for a while. “Oh fudgeballs…”
“What is it?” Eric asked. He didn’t know what fudgeballs were, but he was sure they weren’t nearly as good as they sounded.
“Fire.”
“What?” Eric looked in the same direction she was staring, but could see nothing. “Are you sure?”
Alicia nodded. “The forest tells me.”
“Oh. I see.” Although he really didn’t.
“It’s spreading rapidly. It’ll be out of control soon. We don’t have much time.”
Holly made a sound that was something between a whimper and a squeak.
But Alicia didn’t start moving. She squinted into the darkness of the forest as if trying to peer into the deepest gloom. “And something else…” she said. “Someone… Someone I know… I think…”
“The magic man,” said Holly. “The one who burned our home to the ground.”
“Not just your home,” Eric reminded her. “Everywhere we’ve seen this guy there’s been a fire. Apparently that’s his thing.” The local fire departments must have been worked into a tizzy by now. He wondered if they’d realized yet that they were dealing with a serial arsonist.
Alicia continued to stare off into the woods.
“He’s tricky,” Holly warned. “Del thinks he’s using her magic against us, tracing her spells to try to find our hiding places before Eric can rescue us.”
The first whiffs of smoke touched their noses and Alicia snapped out of her daze. “We have to get out of here. It’s spreading a lot faster than it should be. We won’t want to be here when the flames arrive.”
Eric couldn’t argue with that.
He and Holly followed her as she led them around a thicket of trees and onto one of the park’s many trails.
Within minutes, the forest was aglow and the smell of smoke was growing dense upon the air. A few minutes more and they glimpsed the first of the creeping flames.
Eric was just beginning to wonder if they would be able to reach the minivan before the path was consumed by fire when they turned a tight curve in the path and found their way blocked by an ogre.
Alicia and Holly both yelped in surprise.
“Where did that come from?” cried Alicia. “I didn’t feel it.”
Eric didn’t know and didn’t care. They didn’t have time to think about it. He stepped in front of the girls and held out the dagger.
“Is that Grandpa’s knife?” asked Alicia.
“It was,” confirmed Holly.
“I thought we weren’t allowed to touch it.”
“We’re not. But he is.”
Eric barely heard them. There was no time to waste here. He needed to put this monster down promptly. If it was anything like the imps, it was fireproof, meaning it could stand around here all night. They mere mortals, on the other hand, needed to get the hell out of these woods.
He ran at the ogre, the dagger gripped tightly in both hands. It reached out to grab him by the shoulders and he thrust the weapon forward, burying the blade in its flabby belly.
He managed to stab it three times before it lifted him off his feet and tossed him to the ground.
The smell of smoke growing stronger in his nose by the second, Eric didn’t dare waste a single moment. If they couldn’t get past this thing and out of these woods soon, these girls were going to die out here. He sprang back to his feet and threw himself at the monster again, this time plunging the blade deep into its chest.
Already, the wounds in its belly were spewing smoke. Inside, the monster was already departing this world.
It was amazing the amount of abuse these things could take and keep coming. It lifted Eric into the air again. This time, it hurled him not to the ground but against a tree, where he thought for a moment that he must’ve broken his ribs. But he managed to rise again to his feet.
This time, however, he’d lost the dagger. It was still protruding from the monster’s chest, with smoke boiling out from around its hilt.
Holly was shouting at him to be careful.
But the creature staggered a little, as if dizzy, and took a step backward.
The blade had begun to work.
Eric snatched a softball-size rock from the ground and hurled it at the ogre, bouncing it off its ugly head. It howled with rage and staggered toward him. But its drunken lurch was no match for him. He quickly sidestepped the beast and landed a hard kick to the back of its knee.
It fell to the ground with a heavy thud and then proceeded to writhe on the ground. Smoke poured from its wounds as well as its mouth and nose.
Eric grasped the knife and tore it free.
They were done here. The monster wouldn’t get back up. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go.”
But when he looked up, he found Alicia staring at him with a strange, wide-eyed expression on her face.
“What?”
“That was totally hot,” she told him.
Eric faltered for a moment, too surprised to respond, and felt his face flush bright red in the darkness.
Holly giggled. “It kind of was,” she told him.
“Let’s keep moving, please,” grumbled Eric.
Alicia led the way forward again, but she kept glancing back at him, as if expecting him to do something amazing.
Off to the right, a smoky glow was growing behind the trees, backlighting the forest in an eerie, orange haze. Here and there, he glimpsed the skeletal shapes of burning trees in the distance. The fire was getting closer.
She led them off the path and down into a dry streambed, then across a clearing and onto another path.
As they passed through an area of thinner trees, Eric glanced over at the approaching flames and saw something that chilled him to the bone.
A black, hooded figure was walking through the burning woods. His face was hidden. Smoke swirled around him. And where his hands should have been, fire was dripping from his sleeves.
The magic man.
Chapter Twenty-Three
His companions didn’t seem to notice the frightful figure and Eric didn’t t
ake the time to point him out.
Delphinium had warned him to stay clear of the magic man, that he wouldn’t stand a chance against the wizard’s power on his own. He didn’t have to be told twice. He wasn’t eager to single-handedly take on a murderous maniac with crazy pyro powers and an army of monsters at his command.
“This way!” said Alicia. She led them off the path again and out into the woods, away from the man in the fire.
Holly and Eric followed her. They had to run to keep up. In spite of the smoky darkness, she weaved gracefully through the shadowy branches, clearly able to see much better than either of them in the gloom.
Night vision. Eric wondered if the endless weirdness of the world would ever cease to amaze him.
Looking back over his shoulder, he saw that the magic man was no longer in sight, but he glimpsed several scampering shapes silhouetted against the glow of the flames. Imps. Fast and agile, they’d no doubt catch up to them long before they reached the minivan.
“How much farther?” he asked.
“Not far,” Alicia replied.
But not near enough, either, Eric realized. Delphinium’s dagger was definitely a nasty piece of craftsmanship, but it wasn’t much use to him if he didn’t possess the proper skills to cut down the monsters before they overwhelmed him. And the little beasts were fast.
Alicia halted suddenly and looked around.
“What is it?” asked Holly, her eyes searching the woods around them.
“The fire’s spreading,” she replied.
“Keep moving please!” urged Eric, looking back at the pursuing imps.
Alicia glanced back, saw the approaching monsters, and promptly resumed running. “It’s not natural,” she shouted back. “There’s more than one fire. And it’s moving against the wind…”
“It’s the magic man,” Holly told her. “He’s trying to stop us.”
“If we don’t hurry, we’ll all be burned alive!” warned Alicia.
The imps were closing in. Eric kept looking back, kept watching them, and when he saw one closing in, propelling itself on all fours like an angry, hairless monkey, he turned and swung the dagger. It wasn’t particularly good aim. He didn’t neatly lop off the little monster’s head, for example, but he caught it across the shoulder and knocked it into the brush.
Before he could turn and continue his flight from these burning woods, however, another imp launched itself from an overhead limb, its claws spread and ready to tear into his flesh. Eric thrust the blade directly at it, spearing it neatly through its chest. He actually felt its broken ribcage slam against the hilt of the weapon. And yet, the thing continued to snarl and slash at his outstretched hand.
He thrust the impaled imp onto the ground and withdrew the blade just in time to turn and chop at a third attacking creature.
He was just starting to feel a little bit like a Hollywood badass when a fourth imp surprised him and sank its vicious little teeth into his left hand. He let out an embarrassingly shrill cry and knocked it to the ground with all the manliness of a sorority girl brushing a spider from her hair.
“Hurry!” Holly called back to him.
Eric stabbed the sneaky little monster and then ran after her, shaking his stinging hand and cursing under his breath. But before he could catch up, the ogre that Holly blinded with her thrust broke through the trees between him and the girls. Gory smoke boiling from its ruined face, it stomped after the sisters, following the sound of their screams as they fled in terror.
Eric ran after it, the dagger raised, and drove it deep into the monster’s back. It let out a horrid, gurgling roar and turned around, catching him with its massive elbow and knocking him to the ground.
He had time to think that this wasn’t so bad. He was armed. The monster was blind. He’d been in far worse situations than this. Then one of the imps leapt onto his shoulders and sank its claws into the sides of his face.
Eric cried out before he knew what had happened and the ogre thrust its massive foot out at the sound, catching him in the chest. He was thrown backward and into a large cedar tree, its bristly branches tearing at his skin.
He grabbed the imp by its scrawny arms and pried it off his face. It struggled and snarled, snapping its jaws, but he didn’t dare let go. Nor did he have even a second to consider what to do with it. When he opened his eyes, he saw the ogre bearing down on him, its arms outstretched, ready to scoop him up and crush him.
Still clinging to the imp, he scrambled out from under the cedar and threw himself out of the way as the monster collided with the tree, shattering branches in its wake.
The ogre’s ears didn’t help it see that coming. It let out an agonized roar as the splintered limbs pierced the ruined flesh of its face.
Eric looked over his shoulder as the monster stumbled backward, shaking its ruined head and spraying foul, smoking gore everywhere.
Beneath him, the imp was still raising hell. It had almost squirmed out of his grip but he managed to grab it again before it could turn on him. He was now holding it so that it was facing away from him, at least, but he didn’t know what to do with it. The moment he let go of the thing, it was going to twist around and tear the skin off his face.
The ogre stopped and turned, the smoking, oozing landscape of its face homing in on the imp’s violent squealing.
“Oh, you little son of a bitch…” he groaned.
The ogre began moving toward him again.
Eric stood up, still holding the imp by its arms, and tried to figure out what he was going to do next. If he ran, it was only going to follow this thing’s noisy squealing until he finally figured out how to dispose of it so that it wouldn’t just come right back to him.
As the massive thing bore down on him, he took a step back, then another.
Not good.
A low, gurgling growl rose from the beast’s throat. Eric could see the ruined shape of its oozing jaw beneath the rising smoke.
The imp threw its head from side to side, trying to bite his hands. His arms were getting tired. He couldn’t hold onto it much longer.
Only one thought came to him.
He held the imp out in front of him, as far as his arms would reach.
The little monster thrashed from side to side for a moment longer and then froze in his grip as it caught sight of the approaching ogre. Eric actually saw the little monster wilt a little at the realization of what was about to happen. Then it let out a dreadful squeal and began kicking with renewed energy.
The ogre reached out for the noise and seized the shrieking creature in its huge hands. At the same moment, Eric let go and moved quickly out of its path.
Suddenly, the noisy little monster didn’t sound so frightening anymore. In the final moments before it was brutally mangled beyond recognition, it sounded truly terrified.
Eric discovered that he felt no sympathy at all.
Go figure.
He’d dropped the dagger when the ogre knocked him into the cedar. Now he snatched it off the ground and turned to face the monster. But the fight was over. It tossed away the smoking remains of the imp and promptly stumbled to the side. It let out a sickly cough and sprayed the nearby branches with smoking blood.
The dagger had worked its way into the creature’s lungs.
It was dying.
He turned and fled the clearing. He had to find Holly and Alicia.
But he had no idea which direction they’d gone. He realized that he was lost out here. And the flames were crowding in on him, the smoke almost overpowering. He had enough time to experience a wave of icy panic as he realized that without Alicia to guide him, he had very little chance of getting out of these woods alive.
Then he heard someone calling his name.
He turned, but for a moment, he couldn’t tell where the voice was coming from.
“Eric! Help!”
To the right. Lifting the dagger, he ran through the brush and smoke until he caught sight of them.
Holly was on the
ground. Alicia was standing over her, brandishing a large branch like a club. Crawling toward them on the ground was an ogre whose powerful legs ended in smoking stumps just above its knees.
It was clear what had happened here. Confronted by an ogre, Holly had used her last resort, expending all her energy in a second thrust. Whether by chance or by design, she’d struck it low, crippling the beast instead of blinding it. With her unable to stand, they now had no way to escape the huge, crawling terror that was slowly and determinedly making its way toward them.
Eric ran and jumped onto the ogre’s back. With one swift stab, he plunged the blade of the dagger into its neck and twisted it.
The monster roared and bucked, but he refused to let up. He stabbed it again and again and again, each time giving the blade a hard twist, until foul smoke was pouring from its wounds and its thrashing became little more than a stubborn twitching.
Finally satisfied, he stood up and hurried over to Holly.
“Thank you!” she gasped. “I thought…we lost you…”
“I’m not that easy to get rid of. Can you stand?”
“Maybe…”
Eric helped her to her feet. She was wobbly, but she could stand with help. He wondered what using such a spell must feel like to take so much out of her.
“How far back to the van?” he asked Alicia.
“Not far.”
“We need to hurry.”
But before they could take a single step, there was a terrible crashing sound from behind them.
Eric turned to look, startled, and caught sight of another pine tree sailing toward them. Unlike the first one, however, this one was flying at them from the side. Something unimaginably enormous was swinging it at them like a club.
And it was on fire.
“Down!” he yelled, knocking both of the girls to the ground.
The blazing evergreen passed over them in a blistering whoosh of flames and crashed through the trees, snapping apart and setting the entire area alight. This time, it was ash and embers that rained down on them as they lay sprawled upon the forest floor.
Eric looked up, his eyes stinging, and glimpsed an enormous shape moving through the nearby trees, pushing them aside like tall grass.
