Across town, Donnie was lying wide awake on his bed. Sleep evaded him night after night. There was a nightly war going on; even if nothing catastrophic had happened, he could feel the tension in the air, like thin ice about to break open.
The playful, growling presence outside his window had visited his window every night since the first, assaulting his dreams—which never felt like dreams—and urging him on to come outside. And then there were Fish and Dink. The two “in” members of the Monster Hunters club had seemingly scared the strange presence away, peeking in Donnie’s window and leaving charms outside that he always disposed of later.
In a way, they scared him as much as the presence did.
So far, on this night, it had been unusually calm and quiet. There were no taps on the window, no silent whisperings or crunching feet in the snow. Donnie almost wondered if it was over.
And then one of the Hunters stepped up to his window. The man—Fish, it seemed like—was looking around on the ground, over the window and the edges of it, through the bushes. He seemed to give up whatever he was looking for and stepped back, the other man joining him as Donnie watched through slit eyes.
The sound of an engine grew until a black car appeared in Donnie’s window, stopping there. To his surprise, the mayor himself stood, half-in, half-out of his car, and with a whispered and labored yell, he called for them.
“I’ve been looking for you two everywhere!” the mayor was saying loud enough for Donnie to hear through the glass. “You’re needed at the Key. NOW.”
“By golly!” one of the men, surely Dink, said loudly as he stuffed himself into the car. “What’s wrong?”
The car doors shut and the mayor took off down the road faster than any elected official should ever do. Donnie was so curious, he jumped from his window to his bed to watch the car disappear. His eyes drifted up into the sky, where only the vaguest glimpses of the Key’s tower lights shone.
A face appeared in the window, smooth and smiling and slick, and distinctly not human. Donnie fell back in fright, but the face was gone.
I know what you want, Donnie, what the Hunters won’t give to you. And, see, I can give it. If you let me in.
Donnie put hands over his ears, but it didn’t do any good.
“Shut up!” he cried, fleeing back to his bed.
When you’re ready. I’ll be here.
Lisa’s breath caught in her throat. “Liev?”
The pale figure didn’t move, staring at the ground. Except for the color of hair and skin, it didn’t look like Liev. Pelts of hair covered his naked body and shadowed his face. Wherever bare skin was still visible—parts of his arms and torso—there was a sickly black tattoo. It was similar to the one that had spread over the pilot’s body.
No, it didn’t look like Liev. But Lisa hadn’t expected that he would look the same.
“Liev,” she whispered again, reaching out as she crossed the room. Her hand trembled.
Charlie and Aisling stood behind her, feeling stuck. The witch’s red snake slithered behind them as if it were pacing.
“Liev.” She placed her hand on his shoulder.
The pale werewolf growled and snapped at the air in front of him. Lisa fell back in surprise at the sight of the mouthful of fangs, the eyes completely silver-white. He stood over her, fingers ending in long claws, and fangs clearly visible in the dim light. Even with an uneven and shaggy pelt of fur, bruised and bloody, ribs showing, he looked terrifying.
Lisa pushed herself off the ground and stood toe to toe with the werewolf, slapping him across the face and screaming, “Liev!” A couple of tears escaped her efforts to blink them away.
The werewolf collapsed, and Lisa just barely caught him by the armpits. A dry-throated moan came from the figure. She struggled with his weight, but eventually helped him up to where his chin leaned over her shoulder. She held him in a tight hug.
Almost too quiet to hear, pained, growling words came out. “I told you already, go away. You’re not Lisa.”
“It is me,” said Lisa. “It really is, Liev.”
Charlie and Aisling could see him frown over Lisa’s shoulder. Hesitantly, Charlie stepped towards them. He let his eyes be overtaken by the Sight and looked directly into the werewolf’s solid eyes.
“Charlie?”
For the first time that Liev could remember in the last month, he felt his mind relax, and Charlie saw his friend’s eyes become human again, right before they closed. Liev smiled as he collapsed in exhaustion. Lisa grunted, trying to hold him up.
The sound of a single howl pierced their ears, more ferocious than any other heard that day. They knew instantly that it was the Alpha.
“We need to get out of here,” said Aisling.
Charlie came around to Lisa’s side and put an arm under Liev. “I’ll carry him,” he said.
Lisa shook her head, but when she saw the look on Charlie’s face she relented and—oh, so carefully—helped place her brother over Charlie’s shoulders. This was always something Nash would do, Charlie thought, trying not to think about the strain.
Instead, he stated, “Aisling, there should be explosive bolts that come with that crossbow. They’re the ones with the red tips.”
She nodded, slinging the quiver down and picking the arrows out one by one until she found one. It was clear that they would have to fight their way out. She tried forcing herself to breathe slowly.
“Lisa,” said Charlie. “I know you’re happy to see Liev. I need you to be angry again though. You’ll be the strongest one of us when it comes to fighting out there.”
Black energy already crawling up and down her arms, she pulled her rapier and dagger out. “Who said I wasn’t still angry?”
He nodded solemnly. “Wait until I say go.”
Charlie kneeled on the ground and steadied himself with his spear, as Liev still hung over his shoulders. His eyes burned red.
In his mind, he could see that all of the wolves in the den were gathered at the mouth of their tunnel. The Alpha was in front of his pack, waiting for the humans. Whoever came out of the tunnel first, on either side, would be the first to die. Charlie smiled despite himself. It was a game of chess now.
Whispering to himself one of the only spells he had successfully learned from Loch, Charlie focused on the mind of one wolf in particular. It was a spell that worked well with the Sight, as he could focus on his target easier than another Hunter might.
Suddenly the wolf that Charlie had targeted panicked. From its eyes, Charlie could see it attack its pack mates as the spell of confusion took hold.
Charlie grimaced at the pain behind his eyes, felt his nose leak blood but ignored it. “Now,” he said, as the pack waiting for them began to lose their composure. “Aisling. Run through the tunnel. Shoot at the first wolf you see. Don’t be afraid.”
She hesitated, but loaded the explosive bolt and sprinted into the tunnel. Charlie and Lisa ran behind her.
“As soon as she shoots, Lisa, get in front of her. It’ll be bad out there, but I need you to cut a path. We just have to get behind the pack. Then we can fight them off as we back out of the cave.”
“And then what?” asked Aisling.
“We’ll figure it out!”
With the red serpent dancing between their footfalls, they ducked under the low hanging ceiling of the tunnel, then stood straight again as they ran.
“Are you ready, Aisling?” Charlie called ahead.
“Yes!”
“Then get ready to shoot. We’re almost there.”
They turned the last corner, and Lisa, covered in singeing black energy as she was, had to be careful not to run into Aisling as the fair-haired girl stopped.
Aisling took aim at the first wolf in the tunnel. Although she had never seen the Alpha before, she knew him by the size, and the pure hate that she saw in his eyes. S
he pulled the crossbow’s trigger.
The Alpha wolf reached a paw up to bat the arrow out of the air. It would have worked for the Alpha, had the tip not been explosive.
“Go!” yelled Charlie as a thick cloud of dust blew into their faces.
That was Lisa’s cue. She ran forward, ignoring the dust in her eyes. That arrow would have been like a flash bang to wolves with such heightened senses—she hoped, at least. If the wolves were incapacitated even for two seconds, she could take a little dust in the eyes.
Lisa couldn’t see, so she sent out the tendrils of her gift in front of her, feeling them collide with the wolves everywhere they went. She used her rapier and her dagger, accordingly.
Behind her, Charlie urged Aisling forward, hearing wolves snarl and whimper. Using the Sight, Charlie watched as Lisa disposed of several wolves within her reach. He also saw just how many there were. And most of them were already over the effects of the explosion.
“Get close to Lisa,” he said to Aisling. “You’ll be safest there.”
Aisling wasn’t so sure, but she trusted Charlie. With the air starting to clear, she pulled out another arrow at random—it wasn’t an explosive tip, she saw—and bent down to load it quickly while she had the chance.
“Liev!” Charlie said over his shoulder. “If you can hear me, now would be a really good time to wake up!”
He grimaced, thrusting his spear forward to stop a wolf that meant to bite into Aisling. His shoulders burned as he yanked the spear out of the wolf’s eye socket. On the other side, Aisling fired at another attacking wolf at close range. The silver arrowhead pierced the wolf’s skull and landed in the shoulder of a pack mate behind it.
“Wake up, Liev, please,” Charlie hissed as a wolf clawed his chest shallowly. He used his Sight to confuse the wolf and drove his spear down its gullet, praying furiously as the wolves seemed to wake up, moving faster and with more careful violence. The witch’s red snake appeared at his left, locking its jaws onto the neck of a wolf that Charlie hadn’t seen.
Up ahead, Charlie’s eyes locked onto Lisa. Both of her blades were embedded in wolf heads, and black tentacles slapped or strangled the few others she could manage to focus on in front of her. A wolf jumped above them, its back scraping against the tunnel ceiling, and tackled her to the ground.
Charlie trudged forward as fast as he could. Panicking, he force-fed the mental image of Lisa being attacked by the wolf to the boy on his shoulders, screaming, “Wake up!”
Something snarled behind him, and Charlie cried out as something shoved him to the ground. He rolled over on the ground, bringing his spear up to fight off his assumed attacker, but it was Liev.
The pale werewolf stood breathing heavily, and Charlie could see his eyes were silver-white and solid, not human. The wolves behind them snapped at their would-be pack mate, but seemed afraid to move in on him.
Liev growled and leapt. In that one jump, he covered the distance to his sister, grabbed the wolf she was barely holding off and threw it above the heads of other beasts. It crashed into the tunnel wall, several bones snapping before it fell to the ground.
The pack hesitated. The Hunters, too, hesitated. The werewolf—Liev—seemed to take them all in, and although Charlie feared to think what thoughts ran through that mind that was more wild and feral than the friend he once knew, he was glad Liev was at least on their side.
A wolf charged forward, not directly, but to the side of Liev. It changed its momentum with one leap, attacking him from his blind spot to the side. Without looking, Liev ducked and threw his claws up, raking the wolf’s underbelly open as it passed harmlessly above him.
Lisa screamed a little as Liev yanked her up and pushed her forward, and all of the wolves came at them at once. Charlie didn’t know how they survived the onslaught as an endless wave of fur and claw and tooth battered them from all sides, the sounds of teeth snapping, stone crumbling and being scraped away, or muscles and bones popping, and the breathless howls and yips of the wolves overwhelming his ears.
He used his spear defensively, and whispered spells Loch had taught him, unsure of whether they were effective or not, while Lisa and Liev fought side by side. He defended the rear, while they crept toward the outside slowly, a monstrous pair of brother and sister—Lisa a horrific tangle of tendrils and blades, Liev a dirty-white display of feral clawing.
In the middle, Aisling did her best not to tremble as she loaded arrow after silver arrow. From what she could see and hear, there was no end to this—at least no good end.
And yet, finally, and almost without belief, they broke through the ranks. The only wolves blocking their exit fell behind them or fell to them as they picked up the pace. The rest of the pack—for there was no end to the wolves’ number—was behind them, where Charlie struggled just to hold them off. He began to wish he were stronger and carried a gun like Nash, or at least carried more than a spear to fight up close with when Lisa suddenly stood on his right, and Liev on his left. A mix of relief and apprehension—because right now, Lisa and Liev did frighten him—charged through his body, giving him just enough energy to keep on fighting as they backed through the large tunnel of the den. He didn’t flinch when a black tendril carelessly whipped at his arm, nor when one of Liev’s clawed fingers got too close to his face for liking.
He did flinch when an arrow whizzed by over shoulder. It had hardly registered when another explosion roared into existence against the roof in front of them.
Small chunks of rock fell from the ceiling, and another wave of dust flooded them. Charlie made a mental note to praise Aisling later for quick thinking.
“Go!” he shouted. “Let’s get out of here!”
Hearing the footsteps of Lisa and Aisling, Charlie almost missed Liev whining on the ground, his ears covered. Realizing the blast must affect him too, Charlie dragged him up and hooked an arm under Liev’s shoulder, dragging him forward in an awkward run.
The Hunters had to turn back constantly to keep the wolves at bay. Aisling fired off more explosive-tipped arrows, but she only had three more, and Lisa and Charlie had to do the dirty work, deflecting every open jaw, avoiding every razor-edged claw. As one wolf came forward, Charlie stabbed it with his spear, and its body fell into a sea of wolves as three more came forward to replace it. It became so desperate that they didn’t even turn to run forward any longer, but rather fought walking backward.
Finally, Charlie did fall backwards, tripping over a bump in the floor. He was surprised when his head hit wet dirt and grass, and not the cold stone of the cave. An old, frail-looking set of talons grabbed his shoulder, throwing him back several feet.
Lisa and Aisling helped Charlie up as he tried to focus on the figure that had thrown him so far back. The figure’s back was turned, cloaked in midnight blue with a red snake around her shoulders, but she looked over her shoulder long enough to wink, and Charlie saw it was not the young woman or even the older witch they met before, but now an old crone.
Aisling gasped, but no one was in any state of mind to ask what was wrong when so many things were wrong already.
The wolves poured out of the cave now, piling up and scattering around the crone. It almost seemed as if they were afraid of her, or of moving past her.
“Go on,” the old witch croaked over her shoulder. “Go east now, and don’t look back. Hurry if you want to see your journey through. I’ll deal with these dogs.”
They didn’t need to be told twice. Liev snarled one last time at the cave that had been his prison, then loped past the others on all fours.
For only a moment, the four of them stopped. It seemed as though the world stopped spinning as they looked up and over the crest before them, witnessing a misty line of white wolves overlooking them.
Charlie’s eyes immediately shaded red, but not of his own control. It was as if the magic that surrounded them in this moment wanted him to see
something. He gasped, falling backward to his hands.
As Aisling looked up and saw the formation of wolves, she neither gasped nor recoiled in fear. She seemed to stand just a little taller than before and her eyes misted over as she choked back emotion.
Liev instinctively guarded Lisa behind him for a moment and then stepped forward realizing in his heart and mind what he was seeing. Lisa clamored her way to his side and exclaimed, “What is it? Who are they?”
Aisling whispered, “Faoladh!”
Dark curses being spoken into a harrowing wind behind them broke their dreamlike state.
Charlie looked back once, as the sound of thunder almost drowned out the howling of the wolves at the cave’s entrance. The old crone stood tall like a tree, with her arms outstretched, her black cape spreading out to form impossibly long shadows against the horizon. What looked like a storm hammered down upon the pack of wolves, lightning and hail and wind driving them back. He looked away as horrors started to reach up from the ground, not wanting to know what the witch had up her sleeve.
They all turned toward the crest again, looking for the white guardians, but they were nowhere to be seen.
The crone’s laughter sent a shiver up Charlie’s spine. He turned his attention on his friends. He looked at Liev, who ran on all fours in front of them, and was not sure what would happen to any of them next, whether any one of them would survive this journey. For now, he was just glad to be alive.
Mayor Witherington wrung his hands as he ran up the steps behind Fish and Dink. Light from behind the smashed stained glass window shone out into the night like a beacon for help.
The two woodsmen rammed the front doors open with their shoulders, and then stood there, frozen in shock at the sight before them.
Elizabeth Witherington and Loch, both with horrible head wounds, and Dräng standing above them with a brick in his hand.
Mr. Witherington stumbled forward, breathless. “Eliza…”
Charlie Sullivan and the Monster Hunters: Witch Moon Page 15
