The truth was I didn’t know which way to go. I had not even a faint sense of direction from the maps I’d seen at the library. Therefore, the best logical and ill-advised idea was to turn back, hopefully the same way I came. Retrace my steps. Right? I continued walking, feeling my knees shaking as I did, since my strength to run went on vacation after confronting evil twice in one day.
Calm yourself, I kept repeating. All I had to do was find a road. Right? There was just one in those woods that traveled west, between St. Mary’s and the pier of the harbor. The problem was I couldn’t tell which way was west or north without the help of sunlight. The whole forest was still covered by a thick layer of fog over the treetops.
Crap, Crap, Crap.
So my no-plan had many flaws already. Who knew?
The sudden intense smell of decay and death hit me first. Then I froze on my feet at the sight of a gnarly hand the color of pasty ashes with filthy pointy nails. It had a dead pale gray body and red ruby eyes that revealed itself from behind a large, wide tree trunk.
The creature grinned at me with his heinous, ghoulish, and foul little sharp teeth. The blood drained from my skin. I had never seen such a thing before. I had never known that such creatures even existed. He was devilish looking and short, like a ten-year-old with no hair, and he wore no clothing, exposing his deformed and skeletal body.
My hearts pounded so loud when I saw another one pop from the dense fern and brush of the forest. They snickered, their hair-raising voices haunted and malicious. This could never happen. Those creatures were part of my imagination. I was suffering a post-traumatic crisis. Yes—that was it.
None of this was real. Monsters didn’t exist. It couldn’t be real.
However, those heinous teeth looked really, really abominable up close. I turned around, noting at once I was surrounded by a dozen or more of them. All of them had dental issues and ravenous dispositions.
Like in a bad zombie movie, they looked like they wanted to take a bite and eat me. However, they fought among themselves for who was the first to have this honor using their teeth. Holy crap, they were chewing each other! Yup, as it turned out, their teeth could slice and cut easily—they were that real. I’ll never doubt my imagination again!
I desperately looked for a way to escape from them, but I measured my chances. The forest left me nowhere to run, unless I could fly. Crap. On the verge of panic, I looked for any of the wolves, praying Gavril was close by, but I couldn’t see or hear them anywhere. My glance stopped at a broken branch near me.
I needed a weapon, but unfortunately, the branch was between the monsters and me, scarcely three feet from them. I had to be fast. At this point, I should be grateful if Gavril’s brothers showed up. After all, they didn’t harm me, unlike these demonic creatures that made nasty snapping and biting gestures at me. I ran toward the branch, but I felt my St. Mary’s blazer being pulled from the back, holding me back from the branch. One of them had reached for it to get me. I screamed in fear and frustration. I heard the malevolent snickering.
This had become a torture game. The long sleeves of my unalluring school blazer pulled my shoulders back as the creature pulled me more from behind, but I managed to struggle forward in a desperate measure, dragging him with me as he held onto the blazer and I reached for the branch.
A second creature confronted me with his hideous bite at the same time. I tested my poor baseball skills and wacked him. A third one joined the first, pulling the back of my blazer again. It hardly gave me enough time to undo the front buttons. They snickered more. I panicked, screaming as I struggled to free myself from the blazer.
I had no choice but to drop the branch from my hands when the hideous creature behind me yanked my jacket off. Crap.
I screamed as more got close to biting me. God, I screamed from the top of my lungs for help, wishing I had a weapon or a way to defend myself. They seemed to enjoy my screams.
Their unhinged and erratic group moved to reach me, sending me over the edge of panic. I screamed some more, but this time my screams were of complete and utter terror.
A dark figure appeared behind the mass of creatures surrounding me. A sleek head cover hid his face, and his black outfit looked like it was from one of those ninja movies. He gracefully pulled two long, skinny swords from his back that looked like Japanese swords I had seen in books or movies. I didn’t know what to make of him. I set aside my thoughts of impending slaughter, hoping he had heard my plea for help.
However, the creatures stopped short at the sight of him, giving me the chance to grab my thick branch again. A wave of hope shielded my fears at the sight of him. I didn’t care who he was as long as he was my much-needed help. I watched, mesmerized by how he moved with unnatural speed disentangling from the demons.
His movements were fluid and seemingly light as if he was a ballet dancer or gymnast, or professional assassin defying every rule of gravity as he fought. He easily sliced through one, four, and six of those creatures with each blow of his swords. The sight was ghastly and sickening.
The ninja never allowed any of those slow-moving creatures to touch him or in this case bite him. I had never been confronted in real life with any type of battlefield bloodshed, except in my last daydream of Demyan Greco. However, the sight of blood, ever since the night Mother Clarisse had been so brutally crushed, made me feel nauseated, and the sight of dark putrid blood pouring out of dismembered body parts was even worse.
I was so busy watching him and the ghastly dismembering, that for a moment, I had forgotten the ghoulish creatures trying to eat me, the live ones. That was until one of them took my branch from my hand and another snickered. He made his intention to take his turn to bite me known by holding onto my arm.
Naturally, I screamed, with mindless panic. Mr. Ninja spun and turned to assist me, but before his sword reached the creature’s head, a flash of gold light parted from my arm, and the creature was incinerated. The arrow’s light shield…
In silent qualm, I stared at the fresh mound of hot ashes on the ground. Mr. Ninja continued moving at fast speed, maintaining a perimeter of safety around me. However, the more creatures he killed, the more of them materialized out of the dark, gloomy edges of the forest.
Another creature broke through the protective line that Mr. Ninja kept so efficiently.
The creature’s little sharp teeth made it clear he wanted to bite me. Instinctively, I kicked him in the knees, avoiding his bite. Alas, the creature grabbed my arm just like the first one, forcing me into his hold for scarcely a second or two. And just like the creature before, he incinerated, too, decimated into another pile of ashes.
I wondered if that was the monster protocol, hold while you burn. I stood there gaping at the pile with utter disbelief.
Had I done that?
It certainly looked like I had. One thing was for sure, the light that emanated from me, as the creature had burned, was just like the one of the golden arrow’s light.
Hope rose inside me.
I wasn’t going to be eaten alive by those monsters, at least not without a fight. I threw myself into the fight. My weapons were my hands. I launched myself into helping Mr. Ninja.
Mr. Anonymous Bruce Lee gave me an approving thumbs-up. However, I wasn’t quite sure if Mr. Anonymous’s eyes glinted a hint of likeness at my silly and surely girly defense tactics against monstrous creatures or the fact that this was exhilarating to him, judging from his victorious exclamations that made him giddy with every lethal strike of his swords.
He thrusted his sword over one creature after another, over and over, slicing those creatures into tiny itsy-bitsy pieces, while I touched any that ventured to get to me. Any tainted, evil blood that landed on my face and chest burned instantly, leaving a trail of dying embers and dusty ashes. But the more creatures we killed, twice as many new creatures would show up. I looked around us. It was no use; it was an unfair battle. We were going to die, if not from being eaten alive, from exhaustion.
> Suddenly, the creatures stopped their advance.
But it hadn’t been Mr. Ninja or me that stopped them. The creatures’ glare of terror startled me.
My glance followed the cause of their fear…
Big bear-size wolves, seven of them—Gavril. The cavalry had finally arrived. The sound of ferocious growls mixed with the hair-raising voices of those creatures was enough to make me shudder. Now I understood their terror.
Gavril snarled and snapped at the closest one of these demoniac creatures as a warning. The creatures stepped back in retreat as the wolves kept a waning perimeter around us to protect us. The demonic creatures kept their distance at the edge of the forest like ghosts. All we could see were their red eyes glowing in the gloomy murk.
You should have kept running, Gavril complained, as if it had been my fault I was stuck with demonic monsters, a ninja, and seven wolves in the middle of the forest. Gavril came to my side, and I rushed to hug him.
I missed you too, he said. Never had I been so happy to see him.
And who is that? Gavril asked me, directing his gaze at the stranger in black. I was still on my knees when I turned my attention to Mr. Anonymous Ninja, who was coldly evaluating Gavril, the wolves, the retreating monsters, and me. He sighed audibly under his mask and lowered his swords.
He took his facemask off in one expert movement of his left hand. I gasped as I recognized him. He had no hideous glasses, his perfectly ironed khakis were amiss, and his shy quiet demeanor was gone on vacation to the Bahamas, because the person standing there was a completely different one. I’d imagined him to be the type of person that would hide behind a desk at the first sign of violence.
Wrong. That had been his disguise.
He stared at Gavril and me with a mixture of surprise and disconcert, but never an inch of fear. I’d never thought of him to be the superhero wanna-be type, yet he had come to my rescue. Crap, he had found me—again.
“Well, Miss Pearson, don’t stand there cold turkey. It’s time for us to move out of this dark, dismal, and Acheronian forest,” Mr. Tarbelli declared, using a very American expression for my personal comparison to a cold turkey before Thanksgiving, which in turn sounded out of place, whether with his European accent or with his mythological reference. His allocution tended to be always confusing inside the classroom, and I was beginning to suspect that far from foreign charm, these unnoticeable slips had greater significance. At first, it seemed as if he was trying too hard to speak as if he belonged to a different century. But now I wondered if it was the opposite of that.
Huh… Weird Literature teacher with ninja moves and swords? Uh, I don’t think so. For God’s sake, the man wore fake ugly glasses he didn’t need. His unknown agenda had me on pins and needles. I didn’t exactly trust him, so I didn’t move. Trust no one. Darn. Demyan Greco’s and Mother Clarisse’s words were quickly becoming a mantra.
Stay behind me, Gavril ordered me. His brothers strode from side to side in front of me. We’ll protect you, Gavril said.
“Mr. Tarbelli, thank you for coming to my rescue. I won’t bother you anymore. The wolves will protect me,” I told him.
You know him? Gavril asked.
Well duh… will you try to keep up? He is—was my literature teacher.
“Miss Pearson, you and I need to get out of here now, so we can sort out many things,” Mr. Tarbelli urged—interrupting the mental bickering between Gavril and me—at the sight of hundreds of red eyes around us, watching and lurking in the forest. And by mental I meant the crazy part too.
He doesn’t look like a teacher to me. Gavril wasn’t aware that he was also my legal guardian. I wished that he wasn’t, but as of today, things had gone totally crazy. Gavril’s brothers weren’t convinced either. They growled and snarled, boring their large and very intimidating teeth. In the blink of an eye, Mr. Tarbelli was pointing his swords at them.
“What things?” I asked, trying to deflect everyone’s attention from the tension.
Gavril rolled his eyes. Basically, my question had delayed everyone from attacking each other and also from moving out of the forest. But I couldn’t let myself trust Demyan Greco or Mr. Tarbelli. That, and the fact that we had been at crossroads ever since his arrival at St. Mary’s.
Besides, I had seen what those swords could do. Mr. Tarbelli sighed in discomfort, watching me pet Gavril. He shook his head at me with an ironical humorous grin as if he been defeated. Like he couldn’t believe I was still not trusting him.
Why? Why the disguise? Why was he my legal guardian? What the h—ll was he doing here—besides annoying me? He knew so much about my parents but never said anything to me. The wolves remained watchful, protective, and threatening.
“Is Tarbelli even your name?” I asked, since he was avoiding telling me what things we had to discuss.
Gavril’s alpha brother howled, stirring the others as if warning us of impending danger.
“Miss Pearson, do we have to discuss this here? Now?”
The annoying part was that he was treating me as if I was one of his dullard princesses back at the academy. That wasn’t winning any points in my book of trust. My gaze caught sight of dozens of red eyes beholding our group in the periphery of the forest. The wolves circled us as a ritual dance to intimidate those nasty creatures, waiting for us.
“No. We should get the hell out of this creepy place.” I happen to be reasonable… sometimes.
Shush, don’t use that word, Gavril admonished. What word? That made no sense to me. Instead, I reprehended Gavril for showing up after the fact.
By the way, where the hell were you?
Shush. That word again. You are evoking it. He is right. We should be moving out of here. Gavril insisted on this ridiculous conversation, which made no sense at all. His brothers backed off from attacking Mr. Tarbelli.
Evoking what?
Gods, you are really addle-headed sometimes. HELL—what else, Gavril said.
That is ridiculous, I said, shaking my head.
Really? Then tell me, where did you think those demons come from? Gavril had a point. And what’s with the creepy lullaby, have the Fallen minions decided to go all chorus-line on us?
What lullaby? For the life of me, I wasn’t listening to anything. The lack of sleep, along with all the emotional upheaval from everything that had been happening for the last month, was catching up with me. Nothing was making sense anymore.
What do you mean, what lullaby? He narrowed his eyes.
I mean there is no music in the middle of this forest. If that’s what you are ranting about. I really tried to listen, not that I wanted to. I’d had enough with Ash’s creepy music from h—ll not even a couple hours ago.
Yes, there is. Ask your former teacher from St, Mary’s, Gavril said. Could it be possible?
Former? I smirked. Was Gavril accepting I was leaving St. Mary’s for good?
We are wasting time arguing, and believe me, those monsters are just regrouping. Let’s get out of here. Follow him, Gavril commanded, as we strode firmly and as fast as we could.
I knew Gavril was telling me the truth, so I didn’t ask Mr. Tarbelli about any infernal music. But what were the monsters waiting for?
Well, that’s beside the point. Just keep moving. The unholy Fallen and his minions can come back with reinforcements, Gavril urged. Fallen? That word again.
My glance turned to Mr. Tarbelli who was busy surveying the forest as we moved, and as if I had summoned him, he exchanged glances with me. It was hard to tell if he was relieved or pissed off.
Fact was I couldn’t see Ash, and I couldn’t hear this unholy lullaby anymore. What changed, I wondered. The difference between this morning’s rapture and now… the golden arrow.
Chapter 17
My gaze traveled lazily to see where I was. I had not the slimmest idea that this place existed on the island, and I wondered how much Mother Clarisse had been holding back from me. It was a modern version of a wood cabin by the ocean. It had large
windows and a grandiose entrance framed with stonework. There was no way in this world a teacher could live like this on his salary.
God had a bad sense of timing and of humor. Mr. Tarbelli lived in the gap of luxury while I lived on donations and charity. Oh, and let’s not forget my mother had enough money to buy the dullard academy but not five minutes to write me some loving words or an explanation, maybe an apology. I would have settled for a Hallmark Christmas card with her name. Once again, I held back my resentment and anger. It was quickly becoming an annoying repetitive thing.
Wow, the man knows how to live well. Gavril echoed my thoughts as we stepped into Mr. Tarbelli’s overwhelmingly large garage, which was the cleanest-looking room I had ever seen. Everything was either white or stainless steel, almost like the infirmary at St. Mary’s. However, Sister Greta had at least colorful vases for flowers that I made for her during pottery class a few years ago.
“Miss Pearson, this is a special edition vehicle—and there will be no slobbering from any beast in it.” He looked at Gavril with absolute despise, as if I knew anything about cars and “not just a car” according to him or Gavril. If Mr. Tarbelli could just understand my friendship with Gavril.
Hum, about that… you must keep my identity and our friendship a secret from him or others, if you don’t want me to hurt anyone, Gavril warned me.
Why?
Well, let’s say your kind is not very tolerant of my kind…
I turned my gaze to see the other six wolves sitting outside Mr. Tarbelli’s clear glass garage doors, ready to tear Mr. Tarbelli’s head off because he wouldn’t let them in. The sole exception was Gavril, who seemed fascinated with the cars after he sneaked past him inside.
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