Whispers in the Woods (Firemountain Chronicles Book 1)

by Victoria Lynn Osborne

  Felix walked toward the altar, hand outstretched. He grasped the hilt of the sword. It flared brightly, and in the distance, a trumpet sounded. Jake fell to his knees, clutching his ears. Blood seeped from between his fingers. Dinah rushed to his side.

  “What’s wrong?” Dinah yelled at him.

  “The trumpets of the angels, they’re too much for me. It is melody. I can no longer stand it.”

  “We have to get out of here,” Janelle said.

  Something pounded on the great doors, bowing them inward. Felix lifted the sword. He strode across the room and flung open the doors. The demonic horde flowed through, now that the sacred weapon had been removed. Felix swung the sword and cleaved through the first rank of the horde.

  Jake and Dinah drew their nine millimeters and emptied their bullets into the back rows. Mahogny fired her rifle into the seething mass.

  The mass thinned out. The things retreated. Dinah suppressed her bewilderment. It seemed impossible that weak, soft humans who had lost faith would be able to stand against the army.

  The trumpet sounded again. This time Jake didn’t collapse, but he screamed in pain, clapping his hands over his ears.

  “To the gate!” Felix yelled, bounding through the doors of the temple. “We need to leave before the angels get here.”

  The six men and women sprinted down the hill toward the gate. The ground writhed as the demons scattered before the horns of heaven.

  Declan screamed in pain. A demonic millipede grasped his leg in its pincers. Jake and Janelle pulled at Declan and broke him free of the creature, but his lower leg was mangled, bone showing through the rent flesh.

  Mahogny dove through the gate to their world, followed by Dinah. Felix pushed Jake through the gate, and Jake followed.

  “We’ve got to shut it,” Dinah cried.

  The men started hacking at the gate. Their swords cut through the gelled light around the swirling opening. Dinah approached carefully and studied the runes on the gate.

  “I think I know this.” She touched the runes in a specific order.

  The gate flared once, then closed.

  “Whew, got it. I wasn’t sure if I knew it well enough.” She leaned against the collapsed gate.

  Laya strode toward them, her hands on her hips. “Well, that was an interesting display.”

  Dinah straightened and looked around the clearing. “We don’t have long. Gleebelix will not be stopped by the gate closing. He is on his way through. We need to set up a defense.”

  “Won’t the angels stop him?” Mahogny cradled her arm, the acid burns still fresh.

  “Probably not, so we need to be prepared.” Jake took the police officers to the end of the clearing, away from where the gate would be.

  They lined up with rifles and pistols at the ready. Felix stood off to the side, clutching the sword in his hand. Declan was taken to an ambulance that had pulled up, and the wounded officers and cultists were sent to the hospital.

  It wasn’t long before the gate burst open in an explosion of ectoplasm. Green gore soaked the surrounding area as a huge head entered the clearing. Its three-foot-long fangs lined a double row of teeth. Claws thrust out from multi-hinged appendages. It clawed its way through the gate, and the ground trembled where its footfalls hit.

  “Gleebelix, I command you to return to the Abyss that spawned you, in the name of Jesus Christ.” Felix strode forward, the sword clutched in his hand.

  Gleebelix roared. “Puny humans. I know that your faith is weak. That the centuries have warped belief and no longer is it tangible. Bow before me and worship me.”

  Felix thrust the holy sword into the fiend. It reared back, clawing at the man. Felix looked so small next to the demon, but he hung on, his hands lit up with silver.

  He swung the sword again, striking one of the many knees the fiend had. “You shall not pass. I banish you back to the realms from which you were spawned!”

  “You have no dominion over my kind. You have lost the purity of faith.”

  Jake drew his pistol and emptied the magazine into the demon. Blue blood flowed from the bullet holes, but the creature did not shrink.

  Janelle darted forward with a dagger clutched in her fist. “Hecate, give me strength!”

  She buried the blade in the beast’s chest up to the hilt. Blue blood streamed through the wound.

  With a casual swipe of a claw, Gleebelix decapitated her.

  “Janelle!” Dinah cried, darting forward to her friend.

  Felix stood before the fury. Around him, the forest grew silent. Shadows crept from the leafy bower, drawn by the presence of pure evil.

  Dinah struggled to focus, still weak from the plane. She drew her gun and added her bullets. Around her, the sheriff's department emptied their guns into the creature as well.

  Felix drew out a flask of holy water and threw it at the fiend. Where it landed, the creature bubbled. Felix stood before him, sword in hand, a bit of silver light against a poisonous green sky.

  With a howl, he slammed the sword up to the hilt into the chest of the demon. It writhed in agony, clutching at the weapon. The gate shimmered and whirled, pulling the fiend back into the Abyss.

  “You are banished forthwith in the name of Jesus Christ!” Felix bellowed.

  With a howl the thing slid back into the Abyss, taking with it the shadows that had melted into the forest.

  Felix sank to one knee, his head hanging down. The holy sword slipped from his fingers, and the silver light winked out.

  Medics ran to the man and examined his eyes. “He is dazed but should be all right,” one of them said.

  They strapped him to a gurney and took him to an ambulance.

  Dinah staggered and fell against Jake. Her own wounds overtaking her. The pistol slipped from numb fingers and tumbled to the ground. “Janelle,” she whispered.

  “What is wrong with Dinah?” Laya asked.

  “The world was too much for her. She couldn’t handle the pressure. Her sanity is at stake,” Felix replied.

  “Take her to the Futhark institute. Maybe the doctors there will find an answer.” Jake cradled her as he carried her back to his car.

  Chapter 10

  Dinah awoke three days later in the Futhark Institute. She opened her eyes in the brightly lit room. Jake lounged in a nearby chair.

  “Have you recovered?” He got up and took her hand in his.

  “What happened?” Dinah rubbed her eyes.

  “The plane was more than you could handle.” Jake sat back down in his chair. “You slipped into a catatonic state. You’re lucky to still have all your faculties.”

  “What about you? You were the one with the sensitive hearing.” Dinah sat up on her pillows.

  “Nothing that a little whiskey couldn’t numb.”

  “No wonder my predecessor drank.”

  Jake smiled. “Well, you are not he. You will be stronger than he is and will recover. I know this much about, you Dinah Steele: if the Dragons couldn’t break you during tapping, then the town of Firemountain won’t destroy you now.”

  Dinah poured herself a glass of water from the pitcher next to her bed. “I guess I should stay on with the paper. What a story I will have. We have faced a demon lord and bested it. Well, at least Felix has. This is a great job.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want to go someplace safe like, say, the Middle East?”

  Dinah laughed and clutched her side. It felt good to laugh again. “No, I think that this is something so huge that the world itself will sit up and take notice. Faith is a good thing, but I am not sure that just faith in the Christian God is what is at stake. I think that faith comes in many forms and I am interested to see how the different religions and people come together to start a new life.”

  Jake grimaced. “You just might be right. I have been reading Caedon’s journals while you slept. He mentioned that other organizations, conclaves, and tribunals had power over the planes. It was just that their beliefs weren’t recorded in th
e same manner as Christianity.”

  “And not all Christians. I wonder why the Catholic Church?”

  “Because it was the church during the Middle Ages. The last time there was a great demon war, they developed their own rituals and beliefs. Their own weapons. Father Joseph Conrad has sent his report to the Carolingians at the Vatican. Maybe more of their artifacts will be released in the upcoming war. The church has already demanded that Felix give up the sword. He refuses, saying he will need it in the days to come.”

  “Do you suppose it will get worse? Or, since we vanquished him, will we have peace?”

  “Dinah, we are in a terrible place. The dead will rise, and more ancient ones will find portals and gates to this world. The nexus of the upcoming battles will be in western Washington. I fear the worst.”

  Dinah lay back in her pillows. “When can I leave?”

  “I’ll let the doctor know you have woken up. She will probably want you to follow up with counseling and will encourage you not to drink. She is a good woman, but there is something wrong with her. I can’t put my finger on it.”

  “Wrong?”

  “There is still so much that we don’t know. Well, I will go and get her.” Jake opened the door and went into the hall.

  Dinah heard the babbling of the mentally ill. She clenched her sheets to her chin. Things had better improve. She worried about Leontine now that Greta was dead. She hoped she would be all right.

  Jake returned with Dr. Blyman, who spent the next hour asking Dinah questions about the plane, about what she’d seen, and about the deaths of the police officers to determine her mental state. Dinah answered as best she could, but felt helpless in the face of some of the questions.

  She was released two days later, and Leontine greeted her like a daughter. Emery was impressed with her article, and Dinah soon fell back into her routine. Her mother was frantic. No one in Firemountain had known how to contact her and their normal nearly daily phone calls had not happened for a while. Dinah played down the danger she had been in and just told her mother that she had been on assignment and couldn’t call her. She felt bad about lying, but what else could she do?

  Sometimes, when the sun dipped low on the horizon, Dinah would look out her window and onto the street outside. There a figure of a small girl would stand, and she would watch her.

  Things were different now. The girl was no longer real; she was a ghost of the child found in the circle of stones. Dinah had seen her funeral. The child’s family had left Firemountain, and their house was on the market. She’d thought about buying it, but decided against it.

  Life had returned to normal in the city. At least, as normal as it could be. The articles were mundane in nature. Dinah saw her article in the second paper that went out to the scholars and watchers of the occult. How many of them actually believed what went on in the city was beyond her. It was the first article of that kind she had written.

  But this is Firemountain, she thought. It will be exciting. She shut her laptop and sat on her window seat overlooking the garden, and waited for the next adventure.

  Epilogue

  The bright gold gate flared up, and a woman with golden hair and dressed in golden armor strode out. She marched to where the ground was marred by demon blood. She knelt down next to the damaged earth and trailed her fingers on the distorted grass.

  A bright streak of silver light flashed through the sky, and from it stepped a towering man with great white wings. He was dressed in armor, and he clutched a spear in his hand. He stood next to the woman.

  “It has begun,” he said, his voice solemn and in pain.

  “I know.” She turned her eyes away from the sight of the angel. “It will be worse before it gets better. There are so few true believers in anything.”

  “You shall rally your men and join us,” the angel said.

  “Michael, I am not sure I can. Even in the fields of Valhalla the warriors grow complacent, no longer believing in the final battle.”

  “This will be worse than any war we have seen before or will see again. The few humans that are strong enough to fight will be gone soon. Those that are left will have to discover their faith. It is time.”

  “Ragnarok,” the golden woman whispered.

  “Armageddon,” the angel replied.