Aisling sobbed once into her grandmother’s back. “A-aye. I’ll do it.”
Maurie wheezed, gripping Aisling’s arms tightly with her gloved hands.
“Good girl. You are such a good girl. You’re brave and stubborn, just as I was. I am very proud of you, Aisling.”
“Please, don’t go.”
The old Huntress said something else, but Aisling couldn’t make it out. Slowly, she seemed to grow heavier in the girl’s arms, until Aisling’s arms could barely hold the weight. Still, she hugged her grandmother tight as she sobbed silently.
Chen felt Maurie’s death. He turned with a stricken look on his face, then nudged his horse toward the girl. Gently, he placed a hand on Aisling’s shoulder. Priest and Charlie came next, while Nash, Darcy, and Lisa were too distant to notice anything beyond what was happening before them.
Because, as Maurie had spoken her last words in Gaelic, Liev and the Alpha had seemed to come to an agreement. Up on the crest of the hill, just visible against the remnants of morning’s fog, the faoladh watched—witnesses to this agreement. The Sagemistress’ wolves watched them warily but did not interfere. What was about to take place was something every wolf would be bound to honor.
The Alpha wolf and the smaller white wolf backed away from each other on two legs, then both crouched down on all fours and circled one another. The Hunters watching marveled—worried—on just how much Liev looked like a wolf. His tattoos were no longer visible, every inch of him covered in white fur.
Liev snarled first, diving at the Alpha, who seemed to snicker in a deep vibrato. The big, brown wolf, batted him aside like an annoying kitten.
The Alpha pounced on Liev, snapping at the white wolf’s neck, drawing gasps and shouts from the huddle of Hunters. Liev just barely kept the Alpha from ripping his throat out, his front and back paws pushing against the Alpha’s throat. With a thick paw, the Alpha beat Liev’s legs out of the way, but that allowed the white wolf to roll away.
Fast as a gunshot, the white wolf bounced from the ground to the bigger wolf’s back, raking his claws over those thick shoulders. He latched his teeth into the back of the brown wolf’s neck, jerking and pulling.
The Alpha roared and stood on two legs, reaching behind him to claw at the little wolf on his back. Lisa cried as she saw blood and white fur fly from behind the Alpha, but Liev only held onto his perch there, sinking his teeth farther into the Alpha’s neck.
The giant wolf grunted and fell backward, meaning to crush the white wolf. Liev let go, but he couldn’t move fast enough. He howled on the ground as one of his legs was smashed between the Alpha and the ground.
As the Alpha stood, the white wolf pulled himself away on three legs, his remaining back paw dragging uselessly on the ground behind him. Liev whimpered like a dog. The Alpha barked at him, a command to shut up and fight. The bigger brown wolf jumped forward violently, raising Liev by the scruff of his neck with one giant paw, nails digging into Liev’s flesh. He threw the white wolf into the ground and fell with all his weight, thrusting both thick paws into the white wolf’s torso as Liev met the ground.
“No!” cried Lisa. She started to move, but Nash and Darcy both grabbed her by the biceps. “Let go of me!” she warned, black energy gathering in her hands.
“Stop it,” said Nash, scowling. He hated this just as much as she did. “If you go out there now, every wolf will jump in and Liev will die.”
“He’s right, girl,” said Priest. “You’re brother knew what he was doing. Respect his decision.”
She felt another hand land on her shoulder, and knew it was Charlie’s, but couldn’t bring herself to care either way.
The Alpha threw claw after claw down, tearing into the white wolf’s side. Liev raised a leg to defend himself, but the Alpha ignored it, driving through the pitiful attempt at defense without restraint. When he finally stopped, the white wolf below him lay barely breathing, bloody and unmoving. Standing on two legs, the Alpha raised his head to the early morning sky and howled, shaking the air. The circle of wolves howled with him, acknowledging their leader, as the Hunters felt fear deep in their hearts, causing them to all but cower.
The guardian faoladh took one step forward, lowered their heads and with hackles raised, growled as if to warn: This isn’t over. The challenger still has breath. Back down!
“No,” whispered Lisa. She watched her brother as he was dying once again, and thought that this could not be happening. She did not come to Ireland to save him, just for him to die again. She would not relive this moment, watching him fall out of sight with the Alpha wolf at Blood Castle to die in the moat below. She would not watch the Alpha kill him again.
“Get up,” she said. Then she cried it long and loud, until there was no more air in her lungs to cry it with: “Get up!”
The white wolf’s eyes snapped open wide, and he jumped up. The Alpha swiped at him with another claw, but the white wolf jumped over it, propelling himself off of the Alpha’s swinging arm, and towards his mouth. Both wolves opened their maws wide, aiming for the other one’s throat as Liev flew forward.
Lisa gasped, and Charlie’s fingers dug into her shoulder.
There, in the middle of the circle of wolves, the white wolf’s teeth had found the Alpha’s throat. They stood frozen there for a moment, the Alpha standing in shock with Liev hanging from his neck, until he shook hard and jerked his body weight down. With a gut-churning rip, Liev separated the Alpha from his throat and fell to the ground.
The Alpha reached up to the bleeding hole in his large neck and wobbled back a step. Liev spit out the throat and rammed forward into the Alpha’s stomach, and the bigger wolf toppled over, trying to snarl and bark but unable to. The white wolf landed on the chest of the brown wolf and they struggled with each other. The Alpha swatted aimlessly at Liev, who battered the other’s face with his paws.
The white wolf snapped at the air above the former Alpha’s face, watching the light go out of those red eyes. When he knew the other one was dead, the white wolf—Liev—still bloody and weak, stood like a human on the old Alpha’s chest and howled at the sun. Then he crouched there and barked and snapped at the pack, commanding them to leave.
The circle of wolves hesitated. By all rights, this small, pale wolf was their Alpha, and yet he was telling them to leave.
The mysterious faoladh once again moved forward, tense with warning, and the other pack parted slightly to give them a path. Their leader raised his head and sung his allegiance to this part human, part wolf. New magic was being born in this exchange.
Liev acknowledged the faoladh and turned back to the conquered wolf pack surrounding him. He bellowed at them, and slowly, they broke position, stalking around the Hunters and heading southwest to their den. Many of them turned back to look questioningly at their new leader again, but he only gave them warning growls.
Only when the final wolf disappeared over the hills did the white wolf collapse on his opponent, and the Monster Hunters exhale in relief and exhaustion.
Lisa jumped down from her horse and ran to her brother.
“You did it!” she exclaimed, beginning to embrace him, but the white wolf only barked once at her and shied away. It stood there a moment, hackles raised, glaring with silver-white eyes at this human girl, then relaxed. It whined as it curled up on the ground, licking its wounds.
She reached out and the wolf growled at her, pausing from its cleaning. Lisa hesitated, but got close anyway and placed a hand on the white wolf’s side. The Hunters watched, tensing to react if Lisa was endangered by the animal that was her brother that moment, but the wolf only whined and went back to licking the blood off its paw.
Priest looked at the group around him and felt his heart shudder, his lungs lost the rest of their air as his eyes found Derrick. Then he heard Aisling’s sniffle and saw Maurie limp, lifeless, and the grip on his sword tightened.
> There was a grief that could not be spoken. A pain deeper than words or expression.
Even so, each of the Hunters became aware of the appearance of white wolves that now encircled them. Only now they were closer and not as shrouded in mist and night. Cloaked in apparent magic, these wolves now seemed larger than any wolves they had laid eyes on to this point. It was clear they meant no harm, but that they too were stricken by grief by the fallen hunters.
Aisling spoke in a broken whisper something in ancient Gaelic.
Both Priest and the white wolves honored the words by bowing on one knee, the wolves’ black eyes trained on Maurie. Though the others did not understand, they followed out of respect.
Rising, the white wolves backed into the mist and the cloak of darkness.
The faoladh, the Old Country’s guardians of legend, had returned.
“Come,” offered Priest, sounding tired and old. “Let’s get this over with.”
Drakauragh.
It spread out before them like a portrait of the past. A hard and grimy past, crooked and bent like a bitter old man. The colors were bleached and lifeless, for the people of Drakauragh had little time for renovation. When not attending to their meager crops and gathering to survive, their time was spent on barricading their homes against witches and monsters—a thankless job that did little good, if any at all.
As the beaten-down Hunters slowly made their approach, they noticed a strange crossroads that led into the town, marked with a single, broken glass lantern. One leg of the path led north into Drakauragh, while the other two led awkwardly into the southeast or southwest. Both paths heading away from Drakauragh continued only a short ways before they seemed to be rubbed away into nothing, either by time or by hand.
Chen tensed, and Priest looked at him with concern.
“What is it? What do you sense?”
The Asian Hunter relaxed. “Sorry, it’s nothing. It’s only a human.”
“Where?” asked Nash. “I don’t see anyone.”
Charlie looked with his Sight and was surprised. There, at the crossroads, a woman was crouching. Without the help of the Sight she was almost camouflaged against the grasses and bleakness of Drakauragh.
“I see her.”
“Maybe she can help us,” said Darcy. “I wonder if they have any hot water in Drakauragh…”
Lisa looked at Liev, sprawled across the top of her horse, as she walked on foot. “I wonder if she knows where the Curse Eater is.”
They picked up the pace a little, and Darcy called out to her, trying to be friendly.
“Hello! Hey, we’re here! The Monster Hunters. We made it! Can you help us?”
At the crossroads, the cloaked figure became apparent as the woman stood, almost in fright. Her face was covered in a black mask that covered her eyes, and she had a bowl of some sort in her hand. In her quick movement, it spilled a little of what was inside: red liquid.
After the battles of the last week, the Monster Hunters froze, immediately suspecting blood. Some of them, like Darcy, laughed it off, though, as it occurred to them that it was probably some sort of colored drink.
“We’ve come to help you,” she called again.
The woman turned and set the bowl down in the middle of the crossroads, then ran away, into Drakauragh.
Darcy’s mouth hung open. “Wait!”
“It’s alright, girl,” Priest said, quieting her. “The people here have a good reason to be skittish. I’m sure once we actually get into town, we’ll find some help.”
Still, a heaviness sat on their shoulders as they moved forward; a foreboding fear that told them the people of Drakauragh would not be as welcoming as they previously thought. They moved slowly to the town, passing the crossroads, the broken lamp, and the bowl, which was now empty but stained red.
Charlie looked at the bowl with his Sight, hoping that it would tell him it wasn’t human blood. Instead, he saw through it, and into the ground below to where three large ley lines intersected, perfectly aligned with the crossroads. He shivered, feeling like the crossroads was something wrong, something profane, and urged his horse forward.
And yet, as they passed the crossroads, the Hunters began to feel…better. Yes, they were tired and in pain; yes, their minds were bitter and angry over the sacrifices it took to get here; and yes, the sight of Drakauragh itself was bleak and gave them little comfort. However, there was something in the air that made them sit straighter in their saddles, something that made them feel a little bit stronger, just enough to bear the weight that had been placed on them.
No one had to ask what it was. They all recognized it, from the veteran Hunters to the next generation. Even Aisling, who had shown no sort of gift yet.
Magic.
Charlie looked under Drakauragh with his Sight and saw a tangle of ley lines at least three times bigger than the collection under the gateway at Hunter’s Key.
Why, then, did Drakauragh look so dead?
The sun peeked over the top of the tallest building in town as the Monster Hunters finally made it to their destination. A muddled sense of relief fell on them. They paused there in that strange clash of sunshine and bleak colors, magic and deathlike silence, security and regret.
“Weren’t we invited?” asked Darcy after a few moments of no one coming out to cheer their names.
Charlie looked around with his Sight. “They’re watching us. From the windows. They’re just scared.”
“Don’t use your gift right now, lad,” Priest said. “All the things these people have seen, your red eyes might frighten them.”
Charlie nodded, closing his eyes and reopening them to look at the shuttered windows. They stood there, waiting some more.
“Screw this,” said Nash, his patience vanishing. He put both hands around his mouth. “Hello! We’re the Monster Hunters. We’ve been on the road for days, and now we’re pretty darn hungry!”
Darcy rolled her eyes. “Oh my gosh, Nash, is food all you think about?”
“Right now, it’s all that I want to think about, okay? I would love to be sitting at Tavern’s right now, back home, woofing down a double-cheddar-stacker and a gallon of root beer! Heck, I’d even settle for the cafeteria line at school right now.”
Those that understood what the cafeteria had to offer summoned a collective moan.
Finally, a door to their left creaked open and a young boy of maybe seven walked out. “You’re the Monster Hunters?” he asked with an accent so thick some found it hard to understand what the boy had said.
“Aye, laddie,” said Priest, slipping down from his saddle. “My friends and I are hungry and hurt. Can you get someone that can help us?”
The boy grinned and nodded, taking off in bare feet across the town and leaving a trail of dust behind him. The Hunters that weren’t already on the ground dismounted, stretching legs that were weary and saddle-worn.
A woman stared at them from a crack in the door where the young boy had come through. Next door, a small pair of eyes peered at them from just over an open windowsill. All around them, the people of Drakauragh were watching the Monster Hunters, waiting. Lisa pulled the sleeping bags she’d thrown over Liev tighter, hoping they didn’t notice the strange lump on the back of her horse.
The boy came running back with a big smile on his face, a man behind him.
“Hello!” he called. Priest answered his greeting in Gaelic, and the man smiled, answering back. When they were close enough the two shook hands. “I am Nathaniel. You are the Hunters?”
“Aye. It was a hard journey here. We need to rest before the night.”
“We’ll take care of you. We appreciate you coming,” said Nathaniel. “It gives us hope. I just wish it weren’t under the circumstances…”
A group of men and women dressed in white appeared down the street.
“Ah,” Natha
niel muttered. “Here comes the man who hired you.”
Priest and the others wondered at the distrusting, dark look that appeared on the Drakauragh man’s face, but had no time to address it.
From the white robed group, the first man raised his hands—a small man with gray hair smoothed back to his shoulders. He seemed to hold back tears as he greeted them.
“We had almost lost hope,” he said. “But I knew you would come, and you did. We are saved.”
Priest held up a hand. “Not yet. We will do everything in our power to keep Drakauragh safe.”
The man smiled, crow’s feet cracking along each cheek. “I have faith in you. My name is Dunwick Sol. I wrote the letter asking for your help.”
Nash’s stomach grumbled audibly.
“I am sorry, introductions can wait. You must be tired, and ‘pretty darn hungry,’ as I heard.”
“Aye. But first, we would like to take care of our dead.”
The man’s face fell sympathetically. “You suffered loss on the road, of course. Forgive me for being so thoughtless.”
“It was not just us. Derrick died as well.”
A murmur went through the men and women dressed in white. Dunwick looked stricken.
“That is sad news. Please, come this way.”
Drakauragh was small but spread out, only two or three blocks of houses, some with shop windows that had been boarded up. A little way from the rest of the town, there were several large fields with dead crops or miserable looking cattle. A few of the farming fields were empty, and the houses that sat on them looked abandoned.
Dunwick and the white-clad people took the Monster Hunters to the middle of town where a house, marginally larger than the others, sat. Across the dirt street stood a building that set Charlie’s stomach twisting. It looked like a court house, but large, black, and crooked, and much older than the rest of Drakauragh. Something about it looked vaguely familiar, as if he had seen it before—a feeling that was becoming all too familiar to him.
“This is my house,” said Dunwick gesturing to the building next to them. Charlie was brought back mentally to the other side of the street.
Charlie Sullivan and the Monster Hunters: Witch Moon Page 18
