Cloak Games: Truth Chain

by Jonathan Moeller

  The creepy feeling of being watched intensified.

  I backed into the main street again, trying to watch in every direction at once. As before, I didn’t see anyone. Suddenly I wondered if going into the office had been a bad idea. Maybe that was Arvalaeon’s game. Maybe I would see shadows in every window until I investigated a building that blew up around me. Or maybe Arvalaeon was trying to distract me and make me second-guess myself.

  “Hell,” I muttered.

  Was this how the Elven wizards had always trained their students in the Towers of Art? No wonder Morvilind was so ruthless. No wonder the Archons were so pissed off.

  Or maybe Arvalaeon was just nuts. I suspected that knowing if anyone was lying to you would not be conducive to maximum mental health.

  Right. Nothing to do but to get on with it.

  I continued down the main street, keeping my magic held ready, and watching for any enemies. Belatedly it occurred to me that I should have just taken one of the cars. The one Arvalaeon had shown me had its key behind the sun visor, and I knew how to hotwire a car. Then again, maybe that was a trap. Maybe the car would blow up if I started it.

  I turned off the main street and headed down a residential street leading to the cathedral. Nothing moved on either side of the street, and nothing moved in the windows of the two-story houses. Some of the houses had trash cans waiting in front of them, and all the houses had garages facing onto alleys.

  A flicker of motion behind one of the houses caught my eye.

  I whirled, hand coming up. The house was painted blue, and I didn’t see anything in the windows. I took a few steps closer, circling around the house, and peered into the alley. The garage doors were closed, and I didn’t see anything moving.

  I did, however, see a coil of thick gray mist flowing around the corner of the garage.

  My blood went cold with alarm. I had seen a coil of mist like that before. Wraithwolves could turn themselves into mist, allowing themselves to access areas they otherwise could not reach.

  And what was worse, they almost always hunted in packs.

  Guess the town wasn’t so deserted after all. And I suppose Arvalaeon had something more robust in mind for me than just breaking a big window.

  The coil of mist changed direction, flowing towards me in perfect silence. I could run for it, but the wraithwolf would probably take physical form and chase me down. Worse, it might be trying to herd me towards the rest of its pack.

  Right. That left me with one option.

  I walked down the center of the street, flexing my right hand as I summoned power. Sparks started to curl around my fingers. I waited, my heart racing, sweat dripping down my back despite the cool air. My ears strained to hear anything but the moan of the wind.

  Then I heard the tap of claws against the asphalt, and I whirled.

  The wraithwolf was only four or five yards away.

  The creature looked far larger and far more muscular than a normal wolf. Despite its bulk, it somehow looked gaunt and lean and hungry. Strange bony armor covered its long body, making it look as if it wore a second skeleton or perhaps a suit of armor. Its black fur was ragged and stringy, and its eyes burned with a red gleam.

  It came right at me.

  I cast my spell, and the lightning globe burst from my fingers and slapped into wraithwolf’s chest. Unfortunately, that didn’t kill it, though it threw the creature into a spasm. Before it recovered, I cast another spell, one of the new ones that Arvalaeon had taught me. White mist swirled around my fingers, and a shard of elemental ice shot from my hands.

  It slammed into the wraithwolf’s skull and burst from the back of its head. The creature jerked, let out a strangled growl, and collapsed to the street. It twitched once and went motionless, dark blood pooling from the wound my spike had carved into its skull.

  That was useful. I hadn’t possessed any spells that could kill a wraithwolf with a single casting, and I had fought the creatures on multiple occasions. I let out a long breath, stepped away from the dead wraithwolf, and turned.

  Two more of the creatures glided out from behind the house, loping across the grass and heading towards me.

  Right. The ice spike spell would kill a wraithwolf, but I would have a harder time against two of the things. I considered the other spells I knew. Cloaking would be useless. I could not stay Cloaked long enough for the wraithwolves to get bored and hunt elsewhere. The telekinesis spell might let me throw them into a wall, but not hard enough to hurt them. The flame sphere spell would set their fur on fire, which would just annoy them. If I tried the ice wall spell, they would calmly run around it and eat me.

  I had to use the lightning globe and the ice spike spells, and I had to do it quickly. Otherwise the two wraithwolves were going to kill me.

  I summoned magical power and cast again. My lightning globe hit the wraithwolf on the left, and the creature snarled and went into a jerking dance, fingers of lightning coiling up and down its limbs. I didn’t hesitate, but cast another spell, flinging a second sphere of lightning into the wraithwolf on the right. That creature also went into a jerking spasm as the lightning overrode its muscles.

  I pulled in more magical power, fighting through my exhaustion. The regeneration spell might have repaired some of the damage from the morning, but it hadn’t restored my stamina, and I was tired. But the terror gave me strength, and white mist swirled around my fingers. A spike of ice slammed into the skull of the wraithwolf on the left, and the creature collapsed. I started the spell again as the remaining wraithwolf regained its legs and charged.

  I cast the spell just as the wraithwolf’s jaws clamped around my left calf.

  I screamed in agony, but the spike of ice punched into the wraithwolf’s skull. The jaws clamped tighter around my leg, and then the creature went limp as it died. I stumbled back, agony shooting up my leg, and I fell and landed on my rump.

  My leg hurt. My leg really, really hurt…and as I looked at it, a wave of nausea went through me.

  It looked worse than it felt, and it felt really bad. The wraithwolf’s jaws were like a steel trap, and it had made a mangled mess of my left shin and calf. The wraithwolf hadn’t broken the bones in my lower leg, but it had turned the skin and flesh to mangled hamburger.

  There was a lot of blood. I felt my sock and shoe getting sodden with it.

  Tourniquet. I needed a tourniquet right now.

  I was wearing a belt. I scrabbled at the front of my jeans, undid the belt, wrapped it around my left leg just below the knee, and cinched it as tight as I could manage. That hurt, too, but it slackened the blood flow. I felt lightheaded and woozy, and my fingers started to shake. Maybe it was blood loss. Or shock.

  I had to cast the regeneration spell, or else I was going to die of blood loss. Except there might be more wraithwolves in that pack, and the smell of my blood would draw them. Or there were worse creatures loose in here. Either way, casting the regeneration spell would make me pass out for God knows how long, and the wraithwolves would stroll up and eat me at their leisure.

  I had to find a secure place where I could cast the spell and recover. Maybe the post office? Or I could lock myself into a basement somewhere…

  Another wraithwolf came around the house, and then two more. They were prowling closer, and fear stabbed through me.

  I didn’t have time to find a safe place. I had to get away now.

  I heaved myself to my feet, and fresh pain exploded up my leg, my head spinning, and I almost fell over again. The wraithwolves kept coming, their unblinking red eyes fixed on me. I vaguely recalled that predators preferred wounded prey, and with blood dripping down my left leg, I was pretty obviously wounded.

  I needed to find shelter now, and I didn’t have many options. The nearest house was a little blue two-story house, and that was the best I was going to do.

  I backed away at a painful hobble that wasn’t quite a run, trying to keep all the wraithwolves in sight. Two more of them joined the first three, and all
five wolves spread out in a semicircle, making sure I couldn’t escape. I glanced over my shoulder, making sure that none of them were coming up behind me.

  When I looked back, the five wraithwolves were a lot closer. Four more had joined them, including a bigger, more-vicious looking wraithwolf that was the pack’s alpha. I was leaving a big trail of blood droplets on the road behind me, wet and glistening.

  I jumped onto the porch of the house, almost fell as my wounded leg trembled, wrenched open the front door, and slammed it shut behind me.

  It was just in time. Two wraithwolves smashed into the door with enough force to wrench it. A few more blows like that and they would bash the door down. Glass shattered as another wraithwolf lunged at one of the living room windows. The window was divided into four panes, so the wraithwolf couldn’t fit through it. Then again, the wraithwolf was probably strong enough to bash out the entire window frame.

  The hammering at the door stopped, and thick white mist started to flow through the cracks.

  “Crap,” I croaked.

  The wraithwolves didn’t need to bash down the door or break through the window.

  I looked around the living room. The basement? No, I needed an avenue of retreat, and if I went into the basement I would have no escape. Upstairs, then. If I went upstairs I could escape through the windows and levitate to the ground. Or maybe the house had an attic, and I could hide out there.

  I suddenly thought of a squirrel trapped in a tree by patient wolves. The wolves need only wait until the squirrel got hungry or thirsty and came down.

  Turns out that climbing a flight of stairs with a mauled calf was painful, but terror gave me motivation. I reached the top of the stairs and looked around. There was a narrow hallway, with three doors leading to a pair of bedrooms and a bathroom. The rooms looked as if they had just been abandoned moments ago, and I even glimpsed a toothbrush and a tube of toothpaste on the edge of the sink.

  The stairs were narrow, and I could use them to create a bottleneck. I cast the ice wall spell that Arvalaeon had taught me, forcing my mind through the unfamiliar patterns of the spell and the exhaustion and pain. White mist swirled over the top of the stairs, and I created a six-inch thick wall of ice that came to about three and a half feet tall.

  Right about then three wraithwolves materialized in the living room, and they bounded up the stairs. I cast the ice spike spell once more, and the shard of ice stabbed through the head of the first wraithwolf, sending it tumbling down the stairs. It knocked the second one down, but the third creature bounded up the stairs and leaped, its claws leaving gouges in the hardwood. I jerked back, slamming against the wall, but the wraithwolf couldn’t quite get over the wall of ice. I cast the lightning globe spell and hit the creature in the shoulder. Turns out ice conducts electricity quite well, because sparks and smoke burst from both the ice and the wraithwolf, and the creature tumbled down the stairs and lay limp, flames dancing along its sides.

  “Ha!” I screamed, wobbling on my feet. “How do you like that?” I was getting delirious from blood loss and magical exhaustion. That was bad, because I needed a plan. If I had been healthy, I could have held off the wraithwolves indefinitely with my new spells. Unfortunately, I was sure I was going to pass out soon. I needed to find a place to hide and cast the regeneration spell, and I needed to do it right now.

  I looked back up the hallway just in time to see a flicker of white mist.

  It hadn’t occurred to me that wraithwolves could flow up walls in their mist form.

  A second later five wraithwolves erupted from the bedrooms and the bathroom in a tide of fangs and claws and fur and black bony armor.

  I managed to hit one wraithwolf with a lightning globe, stunning it, but the other four leaped over the twitching creature. The impact drove me backward with enough force to shatter the ice wall, and I fell down the stairs and landed hard in the living room. My skull bounced off the baseboard like a basketball, and pain exploded through my head like a thunderbolt.

  The wraithwolves leaped upon me.

  I had never known pain like that before.

  I screamed and fought, but iron jaws closed against my flesh and claws ripped over me. My efforts were useless. A single wraithwolf outweighed me, and there were five or six of them on me.

  Blood splashed everywhere.

  The last thing I saw clearly was one of the wraithwolves ripping something pink and ropy from the ruins of my stomach.

  Then I died.

  Chapter 6: Failures

  I jerked awake, screaming in terror, my legs kicking and my arms flailing as I tried to get the wraithwolves away from me. I felt the claws raking across my flesh, the jaws ripping away chunks of meat from my body.

  Except the fangs and jaws were gone.

  So were the wraithwolves.

  I had been lying on blood-soaked shag carpeting, but now I felt cold asphalt underneath me.

  I sat up, panting, and looked around in confusion.

  I had returned to the parking lot between the gas station and the grain silos, the town’s main street stretching before me. The ribbons of fire still writhed through the yellow-orange sky, throwing their eerie light over the town. As before, everything was silent, save for the moan of the wind.

  Panicked, I looked down at myself. I expected to see the wound in my calf, my clothes torn to shreds, my guts hanging out and my flesh in tatters.

  But nothing was wrong.

  I suppose the lack of pain should have been a giveaway.

  My clothes were intact, and I didn’t see any blood. I jerked up my left pants leg, but the skin of my calf and shin was smooth and unmarked. I pulled up my shirt, but there were no wounds on my stomach. I had a headache and some joint pain that the regeneration spell hadn’t healed, but other than that…

  I was fine. I felt fine.

  Except I could still remember the wraithwolves ripping the flesh from my bones as I screamed, and my heart was racing with dread, my limbs trembling with the reaction to the terror and the remembered pain.

  “What the hell?” I whispered.

  Something metallic clanged.

  I turned my head and saw that the dials on the bronze clock were now spinning, moving into a new position. The row of numbers below the dial shivered, and the 1 rolled up to show a 2.

  The clock now read DAY 2.

  I got to my feet, trying to get my breathing under control. After a few moments, my heart stopped racing, and I felt a little better.

  As well as I could, anyway, given that I could remember dying in agony a few minutes earlier.

  “Okay,” I said. “Okay.” I didn’t like the fluttering panic I heard in my voice. “Let’s…let’s not do that again.” I looked at the sky and shouted. “Arvalaeon? What the hell is happening? Arvalaeon?”

  No one answered.

  “Damn it, Arvalaeon!” I shouted.

  No one answered but the echoes of my own voice.

  I turned in a circle, looking for wraithwolves, but nothing moved in my field of vision.

  What had just happened to me? I remembered the wraithwolves’ fangs sinking into my flesh, remembered the agony as they tore me apart. Wounds like that were fatal, and even if I had somehow been transported away, I should have bled to death. Whatever had moved me here had also healed my wounds.

  I looked back at the clock, at the indicator for DAY 2.

  Had I been…unconscious or healing or whatever for an entire day? I didn’t have any way of knowing since I didn’t have my phone or a watch with me. Arvalaeon said that I had thirty days until Morvilind noticed my absence, which wouldn’t matter since Castomyr would destroy the central United States first.

  I rubbed my face. I needed to think of something clever. I had done that before a couple of times, and it had saved my life.

  Hadn’t saved me from those wraithwolves, though.

  I looked at the street, at the clock, and then back at the street. I took deep breaths, trying to get my fluttering terror under co
ntrol, and after a few moments, I managed to clear my mind to a reasonable point.

  All right. Break the problem down. One step at a time.

  I had to get out of here. To get out of here, I needed to smash that rose window. To smash the rose window, I needed to stay alive long enough to get to the cathedral. And to stay alive long enough to reach the cathedral, I had to stay away from the wraithwolves.

  Or any other creatures Arvalaeon might have running around this town of his.

  Because wraithwolves were nasty and vicious and deadly and they were still one of the least dangerous creatures in the Shadowlands. There could be all kinds of creatures lurking in the cellars. I had seen a human-shaped outline in the window. Was that an anthrophage? A banehound in human form? Or some other creature I had never encountered before?

  I really didn’t want to find out.

  Wait. There was something else I needed to know first. I had killed a lot of wraithwolves, and then the rest of them had killed me, but I woke up under that weird clock.

  Had the wraithwolves I had killed come back to life as well?

  I needed to check. But I really didn’t want to walk back up that street.

  My eyes fell on the car that Arvalaeon had started. A wraithwolf could go right through the windshield, but a car could go faster than a wraithwolf. If need be, I could use the car to run over a wraithwolf, and however tough they were, they couldn’t survive getting hit by the front bumper at fifty miles an hour. In past misadventures, I had used vehicles to run down both orcish mercenaries and anthrophages, a fact that both Russell and Riordan had found endlessly amusing.

  Hey, I use whatever tools were at hand.

  I opened the car door, reached behind the sun visor, and pulled out the key. Three hundred years might have passed since the Conquest, but car design hadn’t changed very much in that time. The engine came to life, and the dashboard display lit up. I noted that the speedometer and the rev counter lit up, but the stereo system didn’t. Out of curiosity, I turned on the headlights, and they glared off the windows lining the street. I fiddled with the stereo and got static on the radio, but the CD player didn't work and neither did something called Bluetooth. I guess radio waves and simple electrical systems could function here (like lights), but complex electronics were out.