by S. E. Akers
Lazarus started circling the tree, which only heightened my senses.
“Ferrol wanted to charge into her house and hash it out right then and there. But I told him, ‘no’. There was no need for such violence. He’s a bit of a sadistic barbarian when it comes to matters like these. I prefer a more civilized approach. So, I snuck in through her backdoor and poisoned the pot of cider on her stove.”
I tried to restrain my escalating anger. My body was trembling, and I could feel a tear starting to form in my eye. Oh no! Bea!
“I would love to possess her golden topaz…almost as much as the diamond,” Lazarus announced brazenly. “It makes her nearly as impossible to kill as you. But I would choose a more majestic creature to change into. Anything but a common falcon. Dreadful, savage creatures. If the poison she drank hasn’t finished her off, I’m sure stopping back by her house tonight and driving my new wand through her chest will, that is…after I’m finished with you.”
Unconsciously, my fingernails began to dig into the bark of the tree while I listened to his taunts about Beatrix’s unknown condition. Lazarus placed his hands on the trunk of the pine tree.
“We were in the cave almost the entire day…but you never showed up. It’s not polite to keep someone waiting, you know. Then Karl called and told us that he’d captured you. I instructed him to bring you to me, but you never arrived. When he didn’t answer my call, we went back to the guesthouse. That was disappointing. He was one of my best men.” Lazarus let out an exaggerated sigh. “Have you figured out how we finally caught up to you?”
I knew he realized I was close, but the way he spoke made me question “how close” he thought I was.
From behind the cover of the branches, I peered down to see his fingers running across the tree trunk. Something glistening on its bark immediately caught my eye.
I looked down at my hands — my blood-covered hands — that were sparkling with the same diamond residue. No sooner than I remembered laying them on the tree when I’d climbed it, Lazarus jerked his head up and stared me dead in the eyes where I sat perched on a large limb.
“Your trail of blood, of course,” Lazarus declared with a triumphant grin.
With that said, Lazarus brandished the diamond wand like an ax and in one swoop, sliced clear through the base of the pine. Instinctively, I catapulted myself from the toppling tree into another one nearby. That seemed to only excite Lazarus. He proceeded to chop it down as well. I hopped from tree to tree, desperately trying to escape while maintaining my safe cover. The woods rumbled with the sights and sounds of trees crashing swiftly to the ground like dominos. An open clearing lay just up ahead. My natural shelter was quickly coming to an end. I jumped down to the ground before the last one fell and dashed across the field, heading straight for another cluster of trees. I tried to strategize a plan as I hurried across the mountainside, but my options were running out. Without my amethyst, I couldn’t contact Tanner, and according to Lazarus, there wouldn’t be a falcon swooping down to save me either. The wand deflected my lightning, so that was useless, and the Onyx was probably still out there somewhere, waiting for Lazarus to break me down, so he could casually pick me apart like a buzzard.
Fan-freakin-tastic!
As I charged across another small clearing, I tripped coming up a small embankment and fell to the ground. Suddenly, I felt dizzy, and a wave of exhaustion came over me while I lay on the snow-covered ground.
What NOW?
My hand was resting on something — something hard. The railroad tracks… The iron railroad tracks, I pondered. Since I knew Lazarus’ stone reigned over the air, the iron would weaken him just as it did me. My eyes followed the tracks. There was a tunnel roughly a hundred yards to my right. It dawned on me where I was — about a mile from the one of the coal tipples. As I stared into the dark tunnel, a sound in the distance commanded my attention. It was the whistle from a train that was heading this way.
I looked back down at the tracks. That’ll work.
I jumped to my feet and quickly covered the iron rails back up with snow as best I could. They were now completely concealed. My trap was set and all I had to do now was wait for Lazarus to take the bait, and “the bait” unfortunately was me.
Before long, a soft glow of light began to creep over the hill. Undoubtedly the wand was leading him straight to me. Lazarus appeared within seconds. I stood still as he trekked closer, heading down the hill with his sights set on me.
He stopped a few feet from where I was, on the other side of the tracks. I wanted his eyes focused solely on me, to distract him from the unforeseen and treacherous nature of what lay at his feet.
“You haven’t given up have you?” Lazarus asked snidely. “I’ve rather enjoyed our little game of cat and mouse. This certainly has been more enjoyable than my incident with your father. He really didn’t put up much of a fight…Pathetic really.”
My eyes glared at him, but I said nothing and remained motionless. Just a few more feet…
Lazarus raised his head arrogantly. “See, I knew you didn’t deserve to claim the wand’s powers. Anyone who truly understands its nature would fight to the bitter, bloody end for it…and I’m afraid, my dear…that’s not you. Why it chose YOU — I have no idea! Your father wasn’t even a Talisman! I’ve never heard of such a preposterous thing. The essence of a Talisman is like being a blue-blood, from the highest of classes,” Lazarus scoffed as he prowled towards me. “It’s not reserved for common, hillbilly trash such as you.” He shrugged his shoulders and flashed me a haughty smile. “But I guess even a diamond goes slumming…now and then.”
Lazarus flourished the wand in the air. Its brilliant, glowing blade was now about a sword’s length from me. He held it combatively, gripping the hilt tightly up by his chest.
“You were right about one thing, my dear. Some people don’t have a price, but then again, they’re the ones who end up paying a steep one.”
Lazarus scowled as he aggressively swung the diamond wand at me, forcing his feet forward and onto the tracks. Deftly, I ducked down out of the blade’s deadly, sweeping path and quickly grabbed his legs. Once I’d yanked up on them, his body dropped down hard onto the perilous iron tracks. I leaped on top of him, clinching his wrists against the iron rails and used all of my strength to immobilize his body.
The Lapis Lazuli Talisman immediately realized what was he was lying on. Violently, he twisted and turned, trying to release himself from my grasp. He still held the wand in his hand and tried to wave it at my head a couple of times, unsuccessfully. Good thing for me, the iron was taking a toll on his stamina, so he soon found his hands virtually limp, useless, and unable to swing the weight of the wand.
“You think THIS will stop me?” Lazarus growled.
Just then, the sound of a train whistle blared in the distance and a slight vibration began to rattle the railroad track. We both looked towards the tunnel. A faint light was drawing closer.
Lazarus tightened his scowl. “I’ll take you with me! I SWEAR IT!” he vowed in a rage.
The next thing I knew, Lazarus blew a quick puff of poisonous blue powder in my face. I turned my head as soon as I realized what it was, but some of it found its way into my mouth. I could taste the foul venom and felt its fiery burn trickling down my throat. Straightaway, the poison’s ill-fated effects started to ravage my body. I struggled to ward off its sickening impact with the diamond’s healing defenses. No luck. I even tried to make myself throw it up, to get it out of my system, but that didn’t help. None of it would come up.
Lazarus tried to blow another puff of the lapis lazuli’s poison at me, but it didn’t work this time. He even tried to lick my mouth several times, but because his mind had revealed his next move, I was ready for it. As much of a struggle as it was to keep the bastard on the tracks while steering clear of his poison and trying to avoid any further contact with the iron myself, I also had to concentrate on sending the train engineer a “message” to speed up, and not to slo
w down if they saw something ahead. But the worst thing had to have been that I could hear and feel everything going on inside his head. He knew it too. He focused on thoughts of torturing Daddy in hopes of wearing me down mentally.
I could feel my body weakening at an alarming rate. My muscles were starting to loosen up from the toxin I’d ingested, forcing me to secure the grip I had on his wrists by holding on tightly to the rails myself. The iron’s contact with my skin was unfortunately making me just as weak as he was. The train was almost at the mouth of the tunnel. I just need to hold on for a little longer.
In one last desperate attempt, Lazarus grinned at me and started seeping poison from his wrists into the cuts on my hands, where the wand had sliced them open just after he had revealed the hilt.
I screamed out in a tearful rage. The poison burned so badly, like he’d shot blistering acid straight into my veins. I could hardly catch my breath, but I kept fighting to hold on.
Lazarus rallied some extra strength and started infusing more poison into my wounds. Between the iron weakening my own powers and the toxic effects from his lapis lazuli, I was becoming alarmingly incapacitated. I felt every ounce of the toxin consuming my body and the pain was now unbearable.
Seriously pissed off, I rallied a bit of my own strength and used my head to cold-cock his. Knowing that I needed to curtail some of the torturous pain besieging my body, I released my hands, letting go of the iron rails and his wrists. Quickly, I threw myself backward and rolled down the side of the snow-covered embankment.
My eyelids fluttered as I turned my head towards the tracks. Once they had opened fully, I saw Lazarus sitting up on the rails with the wand in his hand, ready to hurl it at me. Just as he was about to throw it, the speeding train charged past, right before my eyes. The wand was knocked from his grasp, and he was driven down into the rails, knowingly bloody and very much dismembered.
As soon as the train had passed, I observed a trail of blood and fragments of flesh littering the tracks. Though I was still in an excruciating amount of pain from the poison, I managed to rouse a grateful smile. The Talisman who had murdered my father was now nothing more than a line of lumpy, pink-tinted snow.
The lapis lazuli’s poison had just about taken its toll. He’d used so much of it, and it’d been allowed to flow freely throughout my entire body. At that moment, a feeling of déjà vu overcame me. The last time I’d felt this way was when I’d fallen into the cave and found myself knocking on death’s door.
I desperately tried to roll over, but I could no longer feel any movement from the muscles in my body. I couldn’t tell if it was mostly from the effects of the poison, or because I was numb from lying in the icy-cold snow. I managed to lift my head, barely. I spotted the wand, glowing in the snow on the other side of the tracks.
At least it’s safe, I thought.
While I lay there immobile, Tanner’s voice called out to me telepathically. I was relieved to hear from him and to know he was alive…but as I heard over and over, “Shiloh? Are you okay? Use the amethyst to tell me where you are…” in my head, I found myself reeling with regret. Out of nothing more than petty revenge, I’d unknowingly destroyed my lifeline — the only means of salvation I could’ve had.
Unexpectedly, the ground began to quake. I didn’t hear any train whistles blowing, but whatever it was, its force was increasing at a disturbing rate. It seemed to be coming from the other side of the tracks. Not a second later, the ground exploded abruptly. Once the cloud of earth and snow had settled, the source of the anomaly was revealed. Rising up from under the ground in a haze of darkness was none other than the Onyx. My mind began to drift, and my body was so weak I couldn’t even muster a curse in my own head.
I watched helplessly frozen as the Onyx located the wand and began to make his way over to the spot where it lay glowing in a snowdrift. Disheartened, I couldn’t bear to witness the scene unfolding any longer. I turned my eyes towards the cold night sky and focused them on a cloudbank that covered the moon. My mind flashed with a random thought.
There’s a full moon tonight. A lot of good it had done me. Bea had said that it was a “spectacular night”, a true blue moon — a “supernatural Fourth of July”. Well, I joked to myself, maybe I can at least catch the show before I die.
Seconds felt like minutes as I lay there, and my curiosity had gotten the best of me. Regrettably, I looked back at the Onyx to see him approaching with the wand in tow, dragging the tip of its glowing blade through the snow. It was only a matter of time. One calculated blow from its blade would send me well on my way. I lay on the ground, trying to shut everything out and thinking only of seeing my father’s face once again.
The Onyx’s billowy black form was now hovering above me, though I never looked at him directly. I tried my best to keep my eyes focused on the sky. However, I did notice the wand casting an unusual glow. Its light was still brilliant, but strangely, it seemed to be radiating an energy that was washed in a subtle shade of blue.
Unexpectedly, the clouds rolled away from the moon. Its striking reveal hypnotized me instantly. Bea was right. It was magical. I’d never seen a moon that big or beautiful in my life. It was actually blue, a peaceful shade of blue. Strangely, I sensed something odd about its appearance. For it to be such a magical sight to witness, I found it to have an air of sadness about it. The striations shifting within it resembled tears, and it looked as if it were somehow crying. I almost turned my head away because it invoked so much sadness (and I already had enough misery of my own).
The Onyx raised the wand and held it like a dagger, aimed directly at my chest. Just under what appeared to be his eyes, I made out a vile smirk within the haze of his spectral face. The Onyx was assuredly overjoyed by tonight’s turn of events. He had the wand and now, he was about to kill me. His deepest and darkest desire was about to come to fruition. To add insult to injury, his battle for the diamond wand had been won all without the use of his supernatural powers.
I braced myself for his eminent strike. However, the first thing to fall upon my body wasn’t the diamond’s blade, far from it. It was the moon, a beautiful bluish moonbeam, as a matter of fact. It glowed and illuminated with such fervor that even the Onyx was taken aback by the peculiar phenomenon. Its touch warmed the core of my soul as it surrounded my body with its comforting and bewitching aura. I couldn’t help but feel that if I had “to go”, this was a delightful way to do it.
My peaceful trance was interrupted by the Onyx, whose full attention was now strangely directed towards the sky. He pointed the diamond wand at the moon.
“This day was inevitable!” the Onyx yelled out.
I lay on the ground dumfounded. The Onyx appeared to be engaged in a bitter argument with the moon, or quite possibly, the Talisman who reigned over the moonstone that Bea had mentioned.
A voice, an enchanting voice of a female, began to cascade down from the sky like an enticing whisper.
“No, Dunamis. I cannot allow this,” the beautiful voice called out.
The Onyx scowled back at the moon. “Turn your eyes away from here!”
While I listened quietly as their argument ensued, I suddenly felt something under my hand that wasn’t there a second ago. I clutched it with a firm grip. It was round and smooth, like a small tumbled stone. Since the Onyx was distracted, I carefully flipped my hand over to see what it was. It was a stone — a milky-white, opaque stone that appeared to have several deep layers of varying shades of gray and shimmered with a misty-blue sheen when the light struck it. I had no clue how the glistening little wonder had got there, but as I held it in my hand, I noticed my body seemed to be mending itself. My strength was returning, and I couldn’t feel any of the poison’s lingering effects. In a miraculous turn of events, within seconds — I was healed, completely. Even the deep gashes that the diamond wand had carved into my hands were gone. And as an added bonus, my golden topaz was fully charged and glowing like it had last Saturday night. It was now obvious to me that
this wasn’t some random coincidence. For some reason, the Talisman who reigned over the moonstone didn’t want me to die at the hands of the Onyx, but as I listened to their argument coming to an end, I didn’t feel the need to hang around to find out “why”.
Without delay, I tucked the moonstone in my jeans and used the golden topaz to turn invisible. With my body now glowing and safely concealed under a mystical veil of golden light, I snuck into the woods noiselessly and climbed up into a tree to hide. I heard the Onyx cursing fiercely at the moon and then all around. He’d finally realized that I had escaped, but he wasn’t stupid. The Onyx had the wand, which was still glowing. He knew I was close.
Though I’d turned invisible, that didn’t mean my tracks were hidden. I scanned the ground and saw that they led straight to the tree I was tucked away in. Frustrated, my hands sank automatically into the pockets of my jacket as I weighed my options. My eyes lit up as my hand hit something inside my right pocket. A sly grin stretched across my face as I pulled out the tiny bottle of ruby cologne.
Carefully, I twisted off the dainty crystal bottle’s ruby stopper and waited patiently for the Onyx to locate my tracks. Once they had been discovered, he followed them, blazing a hazy black trail of fog towards the base of the tree.
Still invisible, I yelled down to him. “Hey!”
Instantly, the Onyx turned his stare upward, peering into the tree.
“Someone once told me that this ‘hurts like a bitch’,” I called out and then dumped the entire bottle of the ruby laden concoction on top of him.
It was a direct hit. Within a second, the Onyx was engulfed in the ruby’s fiery red flames and screaming in terror. This time, the flames were much fiercer. I jumped out of the tree and landed beside of the now, cloud-like inferno. Knowing I couldn’t get burned, I reached for his hand that held the wand and forcefully yanked it from his frail grip. With the wand now in my possession, I gave it a quick twirl and started to swing it towards the Onyx. As I watched the blade whirl around to strike him, the Onyx swiftly vanished down under the ground in a cloud of fire, earth, and snow. I stared down into the deep hole that he had bore into the earth’s crust. The light from his fire-engulfed body was starting to vanish from my sight.
