“That is unknown. It is covered by a powerful glamour. My human senses limit me in this respect, but I can guess that the rope bridge is a good indicator,” Wulfric said while spreading his hands to indicate the offending gap.
“A rope bridge? Bit theatrical for my tastes,” Jim groused.
I snorted in sympathy. All Haldor needed was a flaming dragon and he’d be the worst cliché possible.
“It’s damnably effective, though. He’s funneling us to him in front of the spring. I can only assume that he draws his power from those foul waters in some unknown way, and I would caution you against undue arrogance, Carlie.” Wulfric’s admonishment was gentle, but firm.
I nodded to acknowledge his tact, before clarifying my bravado. “I understand this guy is dangerous, but he’s also a coward, and more than a little weak.”
“Weak? He kills and raises the dead. How exactly is that weak, Carlie?” Jim’s question bordered on a derisive snort.
I looked at him patiently, waiting until I was sure his outburst had subsided before soldiering on in my explanation of my general awesomeness. That was what he really wanted to know, I could tell by his look. He wanted to know how a witch could regard someone like Haldor as vulnerable. That was where Jim, and judging by his expression, Wulfric, were wrong. I knew Haldor was bad news, but I also understood weakness when it was presented to me, no matter how buried under machismo crap it might be.
“How long has Haldor been here?” I asked Wulfric with more patience than I felt.
“You know this. As long as I have been here, Carlie.” At my raised brow, he added, “A thousand years.”
I nodded with what I hoped was an august air. “And how many times has he attacked people outside this corner of the forest?”
“Well . . . never.” Wulfric seemed nonplussed by this admission.
“There’s your answer.” I folded my arms in triumph. I didn’t feel victorious, but Jim spoke up. He was quick witted, and I saw the light in his eyes.
“You think he sends these poor souls abroad to kill on his behalf because he’s weak?” Jim asked.
“No, I think he’s a coward. He’s hemmed in here by Wulfric’s presence, the woods are positively crawling with fae, and he’s comfortable. He may be powerful, but when it comes to courage, he’s flawed. Deeply so. I think that qualifies as a form of weakness, don’t you?” I concluded.
Both men took on that look of rumination where they were adopting and discarding ideas that would lead them to my assessment of our rogue Viking and his horde of cold corpses.
Wulfric spoke up first. “I agree. His unwillingness to expose himself is weak, but it also lets the beast stay in his lair, so to speak. He will be dangerous. We would be fools to prepare for anything less.” He was gravely realistic.
“I’m not saying he can’t harm us. I’m telling you that he can be exploited,” I clarified.
Jim nodded softly in what I hoped was collusion, not doubt.
“Well, your theory will be put to the test shortly, Carlie. Are you ready?” Wulfric asked, pulling me to my feet.
I stretched and mocked a yawn. “Of course I am. I hope Haldor is ready, because his day is about to get much worse.” I coiled my charms toward the palm of my hand, and took a step toward the source of magic that awaited.
Chapter Twenty-Four: Crying Ugly
The walk was not long, but time has a funny way of dancing through your memory when danger is at hand. I realized I missed Gus, and the smell of my house, and a myriad of other details would’ve made me bereft of hope had I been without Wulfric’s tall presence and the steadying aura of Jim on my left. Friends really do shore up the will of even the most confident witch, and I counted myself lucky to have the two men on my sides as we picked our way through a forest that seemed to grow cooler with each step.
I snuck a sidelong glance at Wulfric again, wondering about half-vampire lip temperatures and whether or not I would be warm enough for both of us. I swear he felt my thoughts, because just then he let the ghost of a leer cross his face, followed by a smile of such winning brilliance that I unintentionally reached out and took his hand in mine. He squeezed it lightly, before slowing his step and looking ahead with eyes narrowed in concentration.
“We’re here.” Wulfric’s voice was low, but not a whisper. That told me that Haldor would know we were present, whether by magical means or his own senses. I decided I didn’t care. We had a job to do.
“Like we discussed?” I asked. There didn’t seem to be a need for pointless cheering; either we were going to win, and free the ghost of a long-lost boy, or we weren’t. One of two outcomes, both hinging upon our bravery and skill.
Both men nodded, departing to the left and right without noise or wasted motion. Before me, the forest thinned to expose a sort of walkway that grew broad and inviting, only to terminate at a massive ring of trees. Their trunks alone were yards across, and the canopy showed us Wulfric was right. There were nine chestnuts woven together overheard to create a deep pool of emerald shadows. Behind the massive trees, gray stones jockeyed for position in a carpet of vines that climbed the erratic cliff face. I could see black spaces of regular outlines where rocks had been cut with great care; the broken pieces and tailings were scattered about under a deep coat of delicate moss and princess pines. It looked like a fae wonderland, except for the hunched shape in the middle of the scene.
Haldor crouched next to the wide mouth of the black spring, the hem of his robe dipping into the water as one hand played lazily in an arc, back and forth. His fingers broke the surface into concentric rings of silvered ripples that skirted past the unknown depths, and, for the first time since we left Wulfric’s cabin, I felt fear. There was something disturbing about that water; even the ripples seemed tired, as if it was an effort to move while saturated with such evil.
The bard was utterly unremarkable, except for his eyes. He had dirty blonde hair cropped short to his head, pale skin, and a plain, wide face that was curiously devoid of angles, as if the spring’s presence had smoothed him to a childlike state over the centuries. But his eyes—they burned. They glittered with an internal heat and hatred that was sickening to behold, and he fixed them on me with a smile that left his smooth skin utterly still. Apparently, Botox is a thing even among undead wizards. I decided I liked him even less.
“Hello, witch. You’ve come for a bath?” Haldor’s voice was soft, even gentle. Every syllable made the skin on my neck ripple with animal alarm. He swished his fingers through the spring hard enough to create a froth of bubbles that glistened with prismatic, oily reflections. As I suspected, there was more than water in that black pit.
“Not today, bard. Nor any other day.” I kept my voice steady, but then realized that there was little call for discussion. I closed my mouth and regarded Haldor with a respectful wariness I was certain he deserved.
He stood, or uncoiled, I couldn’t be sure. Peering into the stygian water, he never looked at me as he spoke. “It’s been rather busy here of late. First, that would-be raider with delusions of wealth visited. Major, he called himself? He was a man after my own heart—slavishly devoted to advancing his own needs. I believe he fancied himself some sort of spy.” He glanced up from the water, smiling like a mortician at work. “His bones may be left, but little else. He was quite useful. It was unusual not to comb the nearby towns for volunteers; my children began to harvest them for me of their own volition. They became quite skilled at mimicking the appearances of a natural death, but the bodies always ended up here. In the spring. Where they belong.” His smile grew tender, even maternal.
I felt my stomach flip again at the sheer inhumanity of his villainy. Haldor’s face hardened as he tore his eyes from the black water to pierce me with his stare. “The boy will not be leaving today. In fact, none of my family will be leaving. I need them too much in such troubled times, and now that you’ve presented me with my gift—” His voice fell away into silence as he shrugged cheerfully.
; I detest games, and I was about to let him know how much. “Oh, hell, I’ll bite. What gift? And be quick about it. I have plans.”
He tittered, a cheerless noise of mania that told me the centuries in the woods had left him a few oars short of a rowboat. His eyes flared anew with the zeal of a true believer—I hate those, they’re always so certain of everything—and he waved casually at the black water before him. Bubbles began to rise immediately, slowly floating upward to burst with dull pops. A scent of death carried on the breeze, and I set my feet, readying the first spell. It was time to begin.
“There was no canal. There was no survey.” Haldor smiled wickedly at my expression of surprise. “Any fool can tell that water will not climb mountains, but I whispered in the right ears, over time, until your family dutifully trundled up this hillside to bring modernity to this lost place.” Again, the laugh. He really was irritating, and I had to fight from rolling my eyes at him out of sheer habit. “Your uncle was a brave man—he asked that the boy be set free, but I could not honor his request. The lad was so malleable, such a wellspring of potential in him.” Haldor waved at the cliff face behind him with a negligent hand. “I buried what was left of the man back there. Oh! To be sure, he is not lonely. I know that you must care for the wellbeing of your family. Trust me when I say that the rocks of my grove are quite crowded with kindred spirits.” He smiled, a crazed, implacable slash across his face that revealed small, even teeth.
“You will release them all, Haldor. It is no longer your decision.” I raised a hand, but he held up both of his own in submission.
“I know you think this to be true. Look at you, a young, confident witch. Gifted and true, yes? You must think it incomprehensible that your wishes could be denied, especially when they are so pure of intent.” He shook his head ruefully. “Oh, that you might know true sacrifice, Carlie. One cannot simply wish for justice. One must have might to achieve such noble ideals.”
The bubbles were reaching a fever pitch, popping immediately upon breaking the surface of the spring. Haldor looked down at the stinking water with a paternal gaze. “The spring has always been here, and it always will. The only thing that shall change will be my ability to roam free, safe from the irritating valor of my own countryman.” He craned his neck momentarily, eyes searching. “Where is the half-blood? He must be near. I cannot imagine that you’d be so foolish as to approach me without aid.”
Wulfric struck just as Haldor turned his head to look upward. The blow came from above, a devastating punch that sent a loud crack echoing off the trunks of the chestnuts. I thought there was a chance the Viking had decapitated Haldor, but they rolled to a stop more than ten yards away, Wulfric’s back against the trunk of one of the grove’s enormous trees. Incredibly, Haldor began to rise, but I was suddenly concerned with other things.
Or thing, to be accurate.
A shape began to rise from the spring. And it kept rising. And then it rose some more, viscous fluids of the spring’s depths sheeting downward from the plump form in ribbons of oily light. From ten feet above the black water, a blue-gray head parted and hissed, its jaws swinging open to reveal blocky, stained teeth. The creature began to pull itself from the water with a series of elderly grunts, coughing and spraying disgusting saliva from one end of the clearing to the other.
The hide was slimy, bloated, and pale blue, marred by wounds and scratches, as if it had extricated itself from a thorny trap. Nubby wings unfolded to shake even more of the gross variety of wetness all over the place, and a few droplets fell close enough to me that my eyes watered from the stench. It had four legs ending in three toes, all smooth-jointed and tipped with a single, rounded claw. There was no deviation of color from head to the tip of its fat, wriggling tail, which finally emerged from the water to reveal an overall length of more than twenty feet.
The eyes were small, beady, and black. They focused on me as the beast rose up once more, waving those ridiculously plump arms like a dancing stallion. I covered my nose at the stink just as Jim approached me from behind, an expression of absolute horror on his face.
“What in the name of all that’s holy is that?” he asked, pointing with his gun. It was a legitimate question for someone who had only recently learned about the existence of witches, let alone other denizens of the Everafter.
I groaned as the creature began to advance toward the rope bridge, which appeared to be sitting on the ground. The glamour over the moat held fast, even though I could detect a slight ripple in the illusions as the bulk of the monster began to shift the air around it.
“It’s a wyrm,” I said in disgust. “Haldor probably grew it in that spring. They tend to take a long time to create. Totally magical being, and from the stink of this one, it’s undead.” I turned to Jim and pointed at his gun. “Can you hit those ropes?” I asked, cutting my eyes at the huge knots that held the bride aloft.
Jim responded by snapping off four rounds, two at each knot. The impacts shattered the ropes and pilings holding them fast, and we were treated to the bizarre sight of a rope bridge collapsing into the earth with a ripple. The glamour never faltered beyond some shimmering, and I decided that Haldor must be a seriously gifted magician to create such lasting spells.
“Okay, now what?” Jim asked pleasantly. He cocked his head to listen to the sounds of Wulfric struggling with Haldor in the underbrush; it sounded like two bears were pile driving each other into the earth.
“Well, it can’t fly. I don’t think it can figure out the moat, being dead and all, and whatever brain it had is a lot like pickled mush right about now. I guess we can stay right here and fire off a few—”
The wyrm had come to the edge of the hidden moat. It sniffed around, looked at us with its piggish eyes, and began to contract while lifting up nearly vertical. In a squelch of fluid and floppy skin, it turned into a massive loop, then reached out like an inchworm, and placed its forelegs on our side of the moat in one neat motion.
“Oh, crap.” I kicked at a rock in frustration, marveling at the athleticism of the pudgy pseudo-dragon that now shared my side of the moat. “That was unexpected,” I said.
The wyrm seemed surprised as well, taking a moment to gather its bearings before it tried to turn us into goo. I didn’t hesitate any further, but lifted both hands and unleashed my first spell in a lemony sunburst of light and heat.
The blaze of energy flowed across the shapeless chest of the wyrm, knocking it back and to one side with an enraged squeal. It was a perfect strike, except for one thing: the wyrm wasn’t bleeding. In fact, other than clipping a large patch of the sodden skin from it, I didn’t appear to have hurt the beastie at all. This troubled me.
“Okay, let’s try darkness.” I flicked my fingers delicately toward the charging wyrm, thinking that now would be a grand time for Wulfric to do something Vikingish.My fingers uncurled to release a swirling serpent of black, sinewy fumes that whisked toward the howling wyrm, whose teeth were clapping together in anticipation of a sandwich made out of me.
The spell hit. Hard. I stepped back, faltering from the power of the discharge, and slumping to one knee as the wind rushed from my lungs like I’d been kicked. Good spells can tire you; great spells can made you dizzy. That one was pure ass-kicking magic, and my legs wobbled to tell me so. Jim Dietrich looked at me with newfound respect, and turned to begin firing into the wyrm as it wheezed and thrashed less than ten feet away.
Round after round from his gun crashed into the beast and, as the piteous cry grew to an air-raid siren of agony, I began to feel sympathy for the devil, so to speak. Then it focused those dead eyes on Jim and lunged forward, coming directly at me with a bone popping extension of its freaky neck. The wyrm’s back talons dug deep in the soft earth, and it shoved forward like a bulldozer with a thrown track.
I smelled the darkness on its breath, and realized my hand would not rise in time to cast anything other than a friendly wave. I felt my guts go to water, my skin turn cold as ice, and the hair of my neck dan
ce in a stiff refutation of the inevitable. I thought of Gran, and Gus, and why I simply hadn’t backed up when something this big was coming at me, and then the shadow of Jim Dietrich was in front of me. He’d jumped to intervene with a gesture of such pure courage that I gasped with respect. Jim Dietrich’s instincts were distilled heroism, and I began chanting low to pull whatever power I could in the fastest manner possible.
His lean frame cast a long shadow as he began firing again, but his gun fell silent as a tomb after only three shots. Jim landed, both feet kicking grass into a spray of green, and he looked straight ahead at the maw of the wyrm as it descended upon him.
In a movement like quicksilver, Jim pulled another clip, gave me a half smile, and decided to die. He shot his gun hand forward, firing directly into the skull of the wyrm as its slimy gullet slid over him with a wet splat. The distant banging of his gun going off inside the beast sounded like a gong being hit with frozen steaks; it was a muted testimony to the violence happening right in front of me, but so far away that I could do nothing. The wyrm’s teeth shattered on the bare earth at impact, cutting into the ground as Jim’s shoes vanished and the horrible creature began to twitch in the ecstasy of death.
I screamed, long and raw, and began hurling vicious, untamed magic at the thing that had Jim inside its gruesome hold. After two spellstrikes, bones began to show. After five, my power began to wane, but not before I’d blasted the carcass apart in a shower of charred Everafter that stank like an untended grave.
Jim was gone. There was no body, no evidence, just a gun, smeared with Stars knew what, and still hot to the touch. Acid had scored the metal, leaving it oddly cheerful in the muted sun under the canopy of the chestnuts. I kicked the gun with one foot, and bit my lip hard enough that the coppery flood in my mouth snapped me back to reality. I would not cry from fear, only anger. I cried for loss, not shame.
Halfway Dead (Halfway Witchy Book 1) Page 18
