Valak opened his mouth.
“Not now,” JB told him. “We can’t leave her here, but she doesn’t look strong enough to keep up with us. Is there enough of Zhanna’s potion to give her a little?”
“We may have to take less, but Zhanna assured me what she gave us will last as long as we need it.”
Valak opened his mouth again, this time his eyes bulged, he frowned angrily, and waved his arms.
JB held his hand up, silencing him. “Okay, we’ll give her some,” he told the prince.
Keon raised an eyebrow as they returned. “Well?”
“We’ll protect you as best we can,” JB informed her.
Shiofra’s face lit up, and for a moment she was entrancingly beautiful.
“Here, drink this, it will help you.” Casanova uncapped the flask, but as he offered it to Shiofra, Valak let out a high shriek and sprang at her, his talons extended, and raked her chest, opening her from throat to waist.
As the others watched in horror, Shiofra’s lips peeled back revealing jagged rotting teeth, her eyes turned black and grew large in her face, and her matted hair writhed in thick ropey strands around her head. She cast aside her illusion, and instead of a helpless young woman, they faced a six-foot black hairy snarling monster with dark ichor leaking from Valak’s slash.
“Attack! Keon yelled, thrusting Valak out of the way as the creature bent its elongated legs and leapt for the demonling. Keon dodged sideways as JB and Casanova drew their weapons and ran at the freakish beast. Avoiding the deadly taloned hands whipping the air as the monster swung its long arms, they encircled it. Keon, in his wolf aspect, and Valak behind as JB and Casanova faced it.
The monster turned, seeking Valak as the focus of its rage, and JB darted forward sinking his silver blade into its back. Casanova followed with a hard stab to its lower right side. The beast howled, shrieking its fury to the skies, as its attackers spun out of reach.
The silver wolf howled a challenge as it leapt onto the shape shifter's back, digging its claws deep into the hard muscles of its shoulders, the force of his attack sending the monster to the ground. The creature writhed and twisted underneath Keon, grabbing hold of him and raking open his stomach before flinging him aside like an old rag.
Valak ululated, a high wild sound of enraged fury, attacked, and without hesitation, plunged both his taloned hands deep into the monster’s chest, and ripped its heart out.
They stood panting as the beast sighed its last breath, and a silvery form rose from the disintegrating remains. The shape resembled the girl they had first seen, except her body shone with silver light, her hair flowed in a shimmering stream, and she wore a garment of pure white.
She bowed and smiled, a gentle lifting of her lips, her expression soft with gratitude. “My name is Shiofra. While on earth, I committed many evil deeds, and was cursed to wander the Wraithlands in that monstrous body till I met an innocent who could kill me. I have wandered here for a long, long time.” A look of desperate sadness flickered across her face. “I am deeply grieved for wounding your companion, but I think he recovers?” She glanced at Keon as he staggered to his feet. She smiled at Valak. “An innocent demonling is indeed a surprise, but thank you. I lied about the sorcerer. I have met him.” Her lips curled in disgust. “In return for freeing me I give you a warning: you must destroy both Jaigis’s head and his heart or else he will regenerate.” She bowed again to Valak and within seconds had faded from their sight.
“Were you trying to warn me about her before?” JB asked Valak, as he took yet another sip of Zhanna’s pick-me-up, and passed the vial to the demonling.
“Yes. She smelled wrong, an ancient rotten stink.”
“I hope there’s not a next time, but if there is, I promise I’ll listen to you.”
Chapter Sixteen: Time Unknown
The mountain loomed over them; slopes of black obsidian rising steep and smooth out of the plain. Lightning flashed and thunder boomed from the cloud-covered summit, and there was no evading the omnipresent stink of sulfur.
Casanova fingered the locket. “Selendriel’s up there, and I can sense her fear.”
Keon’s werewolf regeneration genes had kicked in, the skin and muscles had knitted together seamlessly and his wound had healed without a scar. “How do we get up there? And I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there are dust clouds moving toward us. I suspect the wraiths are returning with reinforcements.”
“What’s the plan?” Valak bounced up and down on his toes, a hunting dog with the scent in his nostrils.
“Climb to the top.” Casanova gazed up at the mountain.
“Find the sorcerer,” JB said.
“Kill the sorcerer,” added Keon.
“And rescue the princess!” Valak quivered with anticipation.
JB squinted and studied the slick-looking slope. “I can see a route, but sorry, Casanova, this won't be a quick climb.” He reached up, grabbed an outcrop of rock, his foot finding a small ledge, and heaved himself upward. “Casanova, you’re after me, then Valak. You okay bringing up the rear again, Keon?”
“You’ll know when I’m not, and I can catch this one if he slips.” Keon smacked the side of Valak’s head, pushing him after the others.
“And I can save your life again if you're bothered by monsters,” Valak cracked.
The climb was agonizingly slow. The pressure to hurry, to save Selendriel warred with JB’s instinct to make one cautious move at a time or else they wouldn’t get to the top without injury or worse. He narrowed his focus to finding the next handhold, then the one after that, and hauled himself steadily upward.
The team followed, placing their feet and hands exactly where JB had, but the higher they climbed, the more aware they became that a slip would send them hurtling to their deaths.
The lee of the mountain protected them as they ascended, but an ice laden storm lashed them when they scrambled over the last outcrop and dragged themselves up onto the harsh barren summit. As they scanned the Wraithlands from their vantage point, they could see sporadic flares of crimson firestorms light up the horizon as eruptions flamed from the lower chasms and joined with detonations from the schisms in the sky.
They crowded together, their arms and legs trembling and burning with effort and their fingers so rigid they could hardly grasp the pearly vial as Casanova doled out yet another dose of Zhanna’s never-ending elixir.
“Why aren’t they coming after us?” Valak yelled, the wind whipping his voice away as he pointed below, where a sea of wraiths shifted and surged in the dreary shadows at the bottom of the cliff.
“Perhaps Jaigis warded his refuge against them,” JB shouted. “Casanova, which way?”
Casanova took out Selendriel’s locket, but the gale tossed it wildly. “I think she must be in there somewhere.” He pointed at a dense mass of roiling clouds some distance from the edge.
“Let’s hope they’re not a barrier.” JB stumbled forward, his head down as violent gusts battered him, countering his efforts to run.
The others followed him, in a straggling line, and the closer they came to the bank of shifting swirling clouds, the worse the gale grew. Assaulted by waves of hailstones and shards of ice striking them full on, they bent double as their progress slowed to an inch by inch forward crawl. Then from one instant to the next, the tempest evaporated as they stepped into a nebulous gloom.
The prince held the locket up, and now it strained and quivered, pulling toward the sinister darkness. JB and Casanova drew their weapons, the shimmering light from their blades offering some slight illumination.
“Can you sense anything?” Keon asked the demonling as they moved forward, peering into the amorphous murk.
Valak shook his head. “It’s as if I’m blind.”
“See there,” Casanova halted and pointed to a section that seemed darker than the surrounding area.
JB held his elven blade out straight and approached the spot. Gingerly he poked the dense darkness, sucking i
n his breath and stepping backward sharply as the veil vanished.
In front of them stood a single-story stone building that looked as if it had been thrown together by a giant child.
A tall thin figure emerged from the doorway, shrouded in swirling shadows. Jaigis the sorcerer glared, his eyes twin pools of madness. “Welcome to my humble abode,” he croaked, his voice scraping across the intervening space. He snapped his fingers and bolts of lightning sizzled toward them.
“Casanova, you go left. I’ll draw him out, then you check inside. Valak you take the right, search behind the building. Find Selendriel. Keon and I will take Jaigis.”
The pair peeled off, dodging Jaigis’s ill-aimed strikes with ease, as the wizard moved forward, and attempted to keep them all in view.
Yes, thought JB, divide and conquer, as Casanova disappeared inside the building, and Valak raced around the rear. As they closed on Jaigis, a wand appeared in his hand.
“Ooh, scary. A magician with a wand,” Keon remarked, but there was no amusement in the feral look he gave Jaigis.
Jaigis’s lips moved, though he uttered no words they could hear, and his wand grew into a black bladed longsword. Holding his sword with two hands, the wizard moved toward them.
“What’s this? A ‘whose is bigger’ contest?” JB sneered.
“Remember he’s mine,” Keon said as he morphed into his wolf aspect, peeling back his lips and snarling at the sorcerer.
As Keon slipped away, JB tightened his grip on the hilt, raised his weapon, and with a fierce yell threw himself at Jaigis.
The two weapons collided with a strident clash, the contact juddering up JB’s arm as the blades slid off each other. He danced sideways, slashing down and deflecting Jaigis’s longer blade as the sorcerer lunged at his chest. “So you’re Jaigis, are you? The wonderful warlock who kidnaps little girls?” he taunted as he moved steadily backward, parrying a flurry of attacks, flashes of diabolical light cracking the air whenever the swords connected. Remembering the mess Jaigis had made of Didi’s apartment with his ill-aimed strikes, all he needed to do was keep distract the sorcerer by talking, and keep moving—fast.
“I’m the only person to escape the Wraithlands since the dawn of time,” Jaigis screamed as he thrust, his blade missing JB’s arm by a hair.
JB shuffled backward. “Why did you return here? You had your freedom.” JB swapped his weapon to his left hand and swayed to the right as the wizard swung his heavier sword down. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a flash of Valak flattening himself against the side of the building, his arms around a slender figure with waist length silvery hair, her face turned away from the fight.
Jaigis attacked again, the rush of air behind his weapon whistling too close for JB’s comfort. “Think about it, little human. Why would I come back when I already know how—aaggh!” He staggered, his eyes bulging, as JB yanked the elvish blade out of his gut as fast as he’d thrust it in.
A flying blur of silver landed on the sorcerer’s back driving him to the earth and knocking the sword from his hand. The two combatants wrestled as Keon’s razor-sharp canines savaged Jaigis’s face, neck, chest—anywhere he could sink his teeth and claws in, and giving the magician no chance to use his sorcerous skills. They rolled on the ground, savagely for supremacy.
JB dashed forward as Casanova came running out of the house. “Over here,” he bellowed, skidding to a halt as both figures stilled with the werewolf’s fangs sunk into the wizard’s jugular. As Keon’s human form reasserted its dominance, JB pressed his sword tip against Jaigis’s throat.
“What do you want?” Jaigis wheezed.
“Can you raise the dead?” Keon snarled as he straddled Jaigis’s emaciated body.
“He didn’t even need Selendriel for his own escape,” JB’s breath came in gasps, “but sacrificing her would bring down every spell and ward around the Wraithlands. Freeing the inhabitants would distract from his own flight and create far more destruction.”
Casanova’s saber pressed the sorcerer’s throat from the other side.
The magician’s pupils turned black, the darkness spreading and filling his eyes as sinuous strands of smoke leaked from his nose, ears, and mouth.
“Keon?”
The Alpha released his wolf aspect once more, opened his jaws and howled his grief to the dark crimson storm-filled heavens for one last time. Then he bent his head, ripped open Jaigis’s chest, and tore out his heart. Casanova raised his saber and with a ferocious downward swing separated the sorcerer’s head from his body. “Now he’ll never return,” he said, as they watched the body disintegrate.
Chapter Seventeen: In Transit, Time Still Unknown.
Casanova sheathed his sword. “Ah, my Princess!”
Valak walked slowly toward them, his arm still around Selendriel’s slender waist, helping her walk, his gaze fixed on her face.
“Your Highness.” The elf dropped to one knee and bowed his head.
Selendriel was barefoot, her jeans and shirt were torn and filthy but her voice was as sweet and cooling as a babbling brook in summer. “Rise, Prince Cathair.” She looked up at Valak. “You may release me, kind rescuer. I am fine now you have freed me from that awful cage.”
As Valak reluctantly removed his arm, Selendriel approached Keon on unsteady feet. “You are Didi’s father?”
The silver maned Alpha nodded as he towered over Selendriel.
“It’s not true about Didi, is it?” she implored, “please tell me that wicked sorcerer’s taunts were lies, that he still lives safe in Tropolis.”
“He did not lie. My son’s body lies lifeless in the earth. His spirit is gone.”
Selendriel moved toward him, and as Keon’s arms enfolded her, tears streamed down her cheeks and her chest heaved as she cried for her dead love. “I would have given up my right to the throne for him.”
“I know. He told me. His journey to the next life will be easier knowing we have freed you, and,” he pointed to the muddy splodge that was all that remained of Jaigis, “we are avenged.”
“Guys, I think the rest of the introductions will have to wait,” JB interrupted, “I don’t want to be an alarmist, but we’ve got company. Jaigis’s wards collapsed when he died, and those wraiths he promised freedom to, well, they don’t look too happy with us. Valak, open a portal. Now.”
The first figures had made it to the summit, and the enraged shrieks and yells from an army of maddened wraiths ruptured the air as the foremost arrivals tore toward them.
JB stood in front of Selendriel, with Casanova and Keon on each side. They raised their weapons, prepared to sell their lives at the highest price possible.
“Sure.” Valak pulled out his mobile phone, tapped the screen, and held it to his ear. “It’s Valak, Grandfather, we need to come through.” He paused listening to Ascepius’s response. “No, Grandfather, we can’t wait half an hour. There’s a horde of—”
A pop, a pff, and a glowing gateway appeared. “Get a move on, Valak. I’ve not got all day.” Ascepius irate voice drifted through the portal.
The harsh vociferous screaming from the rapidly approaching wraiths had them scrambling through the shimmering doorway in a panic and heaving a collective sigh of relief as they picked themselves up off the floor of Ascepius’s study. In his haste the demon had formed the portal about a foot off the ground.
“Welcome, Princess.” Ascepius’s gaze raked the group. Dressed impeccably in a cream silk suit and turquoise tie, his eyebrows rose the barest fraction at their bloodied filthy state. “So honored to have you visit. Blah, blah.” He waved his arm once in an approximation of a welcome gesture.
Selendriel stepped forward, laid a delicate hand on the demon’s hard muscled arm, and met his gaze. “You have my personal thanks and the gratitude of my kingdom. Valak has been most helpful.”
“I rescued the princess! Yay!” Valak’s youthful enthusiasm brought a glimmer of a smile to Ascepius’s face.
“Meet ‘The Princess Br
ide’s’ biggest fan. You’ve no idea how many times he’s watched that movie.” Ascepius studied Selendriel for a second, then his demeanor gentled. Raising the elven princess’s hand to his lips, he kissed the back of her hand. “Duty is a cruel mistress, but we cannot escape our destiny. In time you’ll discover compensations. Anyway, as you see,” he indicated the terrace outside the study windows, “I have a press conference to hold.”
They turned, jaws dropping as they spotted the podium with a microphone and half a dozen rows of chairs filled with demons, large and small of various shapes, sizes, and colors. Most of them held notepads or digital recorders as they chatted and waited.
Ascepius snapped his fingers and another shimmering gateway materialized. “Off you trot, I’ve got an acceptance speech to make, and it won’t look good if I’m spotted aiding and abetting illegal entry to and from your world—again. JB, the first thing I shall fix is a permanent visa for you.”
JB nodded. At this point he couldn’t have cared less.
“Go, you’re dripping Wraithlands’ effluvia on my carpet. Valak, I’ll see you in a week.” Ascepius shoved Valak through, gesturing energetically for the others to follow.
“Congratulations, Granddad,” JB called just as the portal popped and pffed out of existence.
Zhanna squeaked and flew at him, covering his face with tiny kisses as clouds of rainbow sparkles covered everyone. “You’re home. Oh, JB. I love you!” She landed on his shoulder, and immediately rose into the air, her tiny nose wrinkling. “You stink.”
Valak, previously glued to Princess Selendriel, was now mesmerized by Zhanna.
Tears flowed down Romeo’s face as clasped Selendriel in a tight embrace. The prince held her away, drinking in the sight of her before clasping her to his chest again. He turned to JB. “Thank you, we are forever in your debt.”
“Oh, it’s nothing,” Zhanna answered, a look of smug satisfaction on her cupid bow lips.
JB looked around, more than happy to be back in familiar surroundings. Most of the jobs they took were run of the mill surveillance, background checks on cheating husbands or wives, but every now and then a case came along that was in a whole other league.
Sorcerous Deeds: Special Investigators for the Magickally Challenged. An Urban Fantasy Novella. (Adept Solutions Book 2) Page 8
