by Ross Turner
All of a sudden, completely out of the blue, Vixen did something Marcii certainly hadn’t been expecting.
In a single, swift, unseen movement, unconcealed and yet barely visible all at once, she drew her hand quickly up and slapped Marcii sharply across the face. Combined with the icy cold air and the chill wind, the slap stung harshly, stealing Marcii’s breath from her.
“Shut up.” Vixen breathed again, this time more fiercely, though her voice was much lower and much quieter. “There isn’t time for this now. If you go out there, you will die.”
Vixen glanced out into the desolate street as she spoke and chills crawled menacingly up Marcii’s back, clawing hungrily at her spine.
“But…” Marcii began, thrown from her furious demands without success.
Vixen simply wouldn’t have it.
“Enough!” The young orphan snapped, flitting her gaze once again between her Dougherty and the empty street beyond the alley. She stormed past Marcii and forced open a locked door, ramming it heavily with her shoulder so that the lock burst inwards.
Marcii couldn’t believe what she was seeing.
“Vixen…?” She started, but the young orphan still wasn’t listening.
“Get inside!” She ordered. “If you ever want to see Kaylm again, get inside!”
Struck by the finality in Vixen’s tone, sending fear fleeting through her veins, Marcii complied and scurried inside behind the tiny orphan.
Vixen closed the door immediately and forced a wooden chair beneath the handle, ensuring it would stay shut.
“What’s going on?” Marcii asked again, but again Vixen silenced her.
“Quiet!” The little girl hissed, pushing Marcii down by her shoulders and out of sight of the window that overlooked the empty street outside through dirty glass.
Marcii had no idea what was going on, but Vixen was terrifying her.
She did as she was instructed, making not a sound.
For a moment nothing happened, but Vixen still did not move. The young girl kept them both crouched low, perfectly still, below the line of the filthy window.
Suddenly a silhouette appeared in the street outside, moving slowly on all fours, keeping low to the ground. The massive shadowy figure loped deliberately past the grimy glass, filling it with blackness for a moment, blocking out all of the light.
Marcii was filled immediately with dread, horrified by what she saw.
She didn’t know what it was.
But she daren’t speak until the beast had passed.
The shadow eventually loped out of view, vanishing from sight of the window and disappearing down the street without a sound.
“Follow me.” Vixen finally breathed, standing up again, signalling that, at least for now, the danger had passed.
“What was that?” Marcii whispered, afraid to even do that.
“They’re wolves.” Vixen answered, not even looking back as she slunk through the house, passing in and out of the tiny kitchen without a sound.
Marcii struggled to believe that.
Though it wasn’t quite the size of Reaper, the gigantic figure had looked more like a bear than a wolf.
But before Marcii could say another word, as a plague of terrified notions ran flurrying through her mind, the sound of distant howls echoed through the dark of the night.
They were a dreadful, chilling sound that resonated around Newmarket like cries of war.
Even Vixen’s face dropped at the noise and Marcii could see the same dread fill the young orphan like a deathly poison.
“We have to go.” Vixen breathed. “Now.”
“Is it safe?” Marcii asked, her voice quaking, though for some reason she trusted Vixen’s judgement completely.
Unfortunately, whilst that might have been true, Vixen was nothing if not honest.
“No.” The young orphan admitted. “Not in the slightest. But if we don’t go now, Kaylm will die.”
Chapter Forty-One
Clear in the blackness of the night, Marcii’s face turned a ghostly shade of white.
“We have to go.” Vixen breathed, wrenching the front door to the house they’d broken into open without a sound. “Now.”
Without giving Marcii chance to respond Vixen took off at a dead run from the doorway, leaving the door wide open behind her.
Fear surged through her veins as the young Dougherty lurched after the young, orphaned girl, chasing her for not the first time through Newmarket and yet still unable to catch her.
Suddenly Marcii’s ears were filled with the sounds of screams and fierce barking. The sounds reverberated all around in the night and created a symphony of suffering for all to hear.
Vixen tore down the streets and alleyways without even pausing to think and Marcii trailed after her, trying desperately to keep up.
She was moving inhumanly fast, seeming to know where both man and beast were going to be even before they did. With her strange, impossible knowledge, Vixen managed to lead Marcii through the very heart of the carnage.
Enormous wolves tore at the skin and bone of Newmarket’s people, ripping fat and muscle to shreds. In turn Tyran’s men skewered and sliced at the fur and flesh of their attackers, heaping great chunks of bloodied meat to the floor with their sharpened blades and axes.
Marcii screamed as she ran, frantically trying to keep sight of Vixen as she was sprayed with blood and dashed with limbs and all other manner of vile bodily parts.
The young Dougherty caught fleeting images of wolves the size of bears, ferocious and terrifying, fighting a dozen and more men all at once, and indeed even winning.
They were colossal: impossibly so. And they seemed to be driven by something far beyond the realms of natural hunger.
There was much more fuel on the fire of this hunt than simply that.
It was a most unnatural sight.
Every man, woman and child that they killed, ripping them to shreds, tearing them limb from limb, the carcasses were instantly forgotten. Discarded without a hint of regard, the wolves moved immediately onto the next.
Darting down the centre of the street, cutting directly between a wolf and the three men urgently trying to fight it off, Marcii followed the young girl Vixen straight through it all, untouched by the carnage.
She darted right into an alleyway and Marcii followed, just about evading the hurtling body of an armoured enforcer as he was strewn down the street, followed immediately by an enormous wolf with fangs doused in blood.
Marcii screamed again and just about managed to dive out of the way, cutting and grazing her palms and legs as she threw herself into the alley, scraping along the floor on her own momentum.
Directly behind her the battered enforcer jumped to his feet and clubbed the bear sized wolf in the face with his hefty mace. But the huge brute just shrugged it off and wrapped his jaws around the man’s head, drooling blood over him as the man’s life poured down his scratched, battered armour.
Marcii, facing the wolf in terror, still on the floor, dragged herself slowly back. She tried not to make and sudden movements, but at the same time she was desperate to get away.
Eventually the demolished man’s limbs just about stopped twitching and the wolf released his head from its massive, monstrous grasp.
His face was no longer recognisable, Marcii saw, as his body dropped limply to the floor.
Marcii’s expression was the picture of desolation, but even as she stared at the horrific sight, she was unable to turn her eyes away. She felt drawn to it, almost as if she needed to watch.
Simultaneously though, even as she inescapably drank it in, Marcii’s stomach turned violently and she threw up its contents onto the alleyway floor.
Barely able to control herself, once she’d heaved several times, Marcii looked back up nervously. She wiped her mouth and spat out the last remaining contents of her own vomit. The monstrosity of a creature turned its fearsome gaze upon her and she was filled all of a sudden with unrivalled dread.
&n
bsp; She cursed at her own stupidity.
She shouldn’t have stopped.
She should have followed Vixen like she was supposed to.
“Marcii!” Vixen screamed from behind her, as if on cue. “Marcii run!!” She cried desperately, but it was too late.
The terrified Dougherty threw a quick glance over her shoulder and saw Vixen at the other end of the narrow, dingy alleyway, with yet even more carnage unfolding in the street beyond where she stood.
Marcii turned and scrambled helplessly towards her young orphan, fleeing the enormous beast as it encroached awfully upon her.
Vixen urged her to run.
Marcii clambered desperately to her feet.
But then yet another figure appeared behind Vixen, looming at the other end of the alleyway in all its terrifying menace, armed to the hilt.
Marcii froze in her tracks.
Tyran.
“Looks like your time is up, witch.” He breathed grittily down the narrow crevice of a street. His words dripped with gloating and carried somehow above the sound of every scream and every howl.
An unforgiving wind cut down between the tall, thin buildings. Though Marcii felt it, it barely touched her, for she was too filled with dread and horror.
Vixen leapt back down the alley in an instant, moving inhumanly fast, and crouched back at Marcii’s side.
As ever her orphaned gaze was level and focused.
“Vixen…” Marcii breathed, but the young girl did not reply.
Her expression was set, as was she.
She was waiting to see who would make the first move.
The wolf.
Or Tyran.
The creature seemed a little warier now, for clearly it was uncertain about the figure approaching from the other end of the alleyway.
Nonetheless, they both still encroached in on the poor, helpless girls, ever further closing the gap between them and certain death.
“Vixen…” Marcii whispered again, terror in the tone.
But the young orphan merely stood on, steadfast and unmoving, as if she knew something that Marcii did not.
She always knew something that Marcii did not, it seemed.
“Hush…” Came Vixen’s eventual and only reply, as the monstrous wolf and the dreadful Lord Tyran closed the cavity between them down to a mere dozen feet.
The houses on either side of the alley seemed taller and narrower than ever before and they pressed in around Marcii awfully, offering no escape.
The enormous wolf crouched, belly low to the ground, preparing to leap forward and claim its prey.
Tyran brandished his massive broadsword menacingly, smiling cruelly.
But even still, as ever, there was much more happening than met the eye.
Reaper made not a sound in the shifting darkness.
As he always would, he loomed dreadfully in the dead of the night.
Like a ghostly shadow he appeared directly behind the wolf, merging with the darkness itself, without a sight or smell or sound to be sensed.
Chapter Forty-Two
The wolf leapt from its crouch, launching itself through the air in a huge, arcing pounce.
In the same moment however, a massive, impending hand reached out from the darkness, moving with speed like lightning. Reaper’s powerful grasp seized the wolf by the scruff of its neck, halting it in its tracks and dragging it back mid-flight.
Regardless of how enormous and powerful the wolf might have been, it seemed to have nothing on Reaper.
The monstrous, loving demon clutched the beast like a ragdoll.
The wolf squirmed and snarled and snapped at him, clawing his arm furiously. But it made not the slightest bit of difference.
Reaper drew his arm back in a single, enormous arc, even as the wolf barked and bit at him still.
He flung the beast forward with gargantuan might, launching it over Marcii and Vixen’s heads and straight towards Tyran.
Adrenaline raced.
Howls echoed.
Time seemed to stand still and yet at the same time flit by in an instant.
“Now!!” Vixen screamed.
Tyran cried out, both with fury and with shock, as he found himself face to face with the furious, startled wolf. The beast hurtled through the air towards him with no control whatsoever over the course Reaper had set it on.
At the very last second the dreadful tyrant raised his blade in a final, futile defence, having no other way to shield himself.
Marcii found that she couldn’t tear her eyes from the sight once again, but had no choice but to be whisked away as she felt herself ripped from the floor by Reaper’s strong, warm hand.
She heard the sound of splitting ribs and bursting organs as Tyran’s blade smashed through the wolf’s ribcage, and indeed also his agonised cry as the beast slashed and bit instinctively at his face and body.
The sound carried off into the night, but then so did Marcii and Vixen, as Reaper scooped them up into his powerful arms and swept swiftly from the alleyway and back out into the streets.
Instantly they were met by yet more screams of terror as Reaper revealed himself in full to the townspeople.
But that couldn’t be helped.
He ignored their cries and instead followed Vixen’s directions without a moment’s hesitation.
It was as if every word the girl spoke was gospel.
The young orphan pointed this way and that, screaming out instructions as she did so. The great hulking demon veered left and right through the streets flooded with carnage and blood.
“He’s in there!!” Vixen suddenly yelled, shrieking above the sound of the slaughter and pointing directly at the building ahead, at the end of the street.
Reaper picked up somehow even more speed, if that were even possible, moving with power that Marcii had never before witnessed.
Midstride, the enormous demon shifted both girls onto one arm. Even as he ran still, Reaper raised his now free hand back and above his head, taking a giant, momentum filled swing.
He pummelled his fist into the side of the building that Vixen had indicated. His clenched hand hammered straight through the stone and mortar as if it were made from mere wood.
The wall shattered and exploded, spraying fragments of rock and shards of stone for a hundred feet in every direction, showering beast and man alike.
Reaper stepped back and Vixen and Marcii dove immediately and instinctively inside, scrambling without a thought through the massive hole Reaper had just created.
Marcii felt as if something altogether unknown had come over her as she drove her body forwards.
She had not a care in the world for herself, thinking only of Kaylm.
And then all of a sudden, like a rare, unrivalled gift, there he was.
Battered and bruised and barely even conscious, Kaylm was locked in what looked to be a purpose built cell.
Marcii had never seen anything like it.
Tyran had gone to great lengths to extend Kaylm’s suffering, she noted lividly.
He was surrounded on three sides by sturdy, narrowly spaced metal bars, with a thick, barred door built into the front wall. He half leant and half lay up against the stone wall to which they were joined.
In the cell with him there was nothing but a rusty bucket.
The smell was horrendous.
Instinctively Marcii raced over to the cage that held her Kaylm, though, even if he had been free, she doubted he would have been able to get very far the state he was in.
She tugged desperately at the hefty bars, screaming his name as she did so, trying to rouse him from his ruined state. She rattled the door set into the cage in a frantic attempt to open it, but to no avail.
The bars didn’t even budge.
The young Master Evans stirred slightly at the sound however.
“Marcii…?” He mumbled, unable to open his eyes and barely able to speak, for his face was so badly bruised and swollen: blue and purple and black.
Marcii r
an back outside to Reaper and urged for him to help.
“Please get him out!!” She pleaded. “He’s trapped, Reaper!!”
But the enormous demon only raised his hands and wove his reply silently into the air, pointing back towards the cage as he spoke.
Unbeknownst to Marcii, the young orphaned girl Vixen had stepped up to the bars surrounding Kaylm. She faced up against the sturdy, barred door and slowly wrapped her tiny fingers around their cold iron touch.
With the slightest, deftest of movements, Vixen wrenched her arms backwards and tore the door clean from the cell, ripping metal from metal with a horrendous grating, grinding sound.
As the bars buckled and the hinges broke clean off, churning with the sound of twisting iron and steel, the tiny girl tossed the door aside as if it were nothing at all. It smashed into the stone floor with a deafening metallic clang and she turned back to look at Marcii with an expression that was entirely unreadable.
But Marcii didn’t even bother to stop in awe.
The time for that was long passed.
Even as Vixen tossed the door so casually and impossibly aside, Kaylm was somehow attempting to struggle to his feet.
He barely made it onto all fours. Every time he tried to stand he fell again, without a shadow of a doubt, though it wasn’t for want of trying.
Over and over again he fought to stand.
Marcii dreaded to think how badly injured he was.
She imagined he was much worse that he looked.
But he was not one to give in easily.
Rushing in, she and Vixen helped him to his feet, as carefully and as quickly as they could manage.
Allowing Kaylm to hang off her shoulder, Marcii took his weight as much as she possibly could. Vixen supported him from the other side and together they helped him limp back through the hole in the wall that Reaper had created.
He scraped his feet over the rubble, unable to lift his legs properly. Reaper quickly cleared a walkway for them with a vast sweep of his arm to make it easier.
“We have to leave.” Vixen warned. Her words were ominous and filled with more than a little disquiet. “We have to go now.”
Almost immediately, as if on cue, new shouts sounded from down the street.
