The Dark Portal (The Gryphon Chronicles, Book 3)

by E. G. Foley

  “What’s he done to them?” Archie cried.

  “Blimey,” Jake breathed.

  “It’s as I told you,” Old Sack replied, nervously following. “Garnock’s been draining the life out of them!”

  “Dr. Sackville was right. It was a feeding frenzy,” Madam Sylvia murmured. “This is almost as bad as the séance. Are they dead?”

  At once, Derek and Archie hurried down the aisles between the desks, checking all the kids.

  “Alive,” Derek reported.

  “This one, too,” Archie said.

  As warriors, all Guardians were trained in battlefield medicine to help the wounded, while Archie had sat in on some medical courses at Oxford. Madam Sylvia also knew about healing, though her specialty was in apothecary herbs.

  With their various training, all three got to work helping the victims. While they raced from one listless, inert kid to the next, checking their pulses and trying to revive them, Jake restrained his rage over Garnock doing this to them and carefully scanned the classroom.

  As the only one who could actually see spirits, he alone was able to confirm that Garnock wasn’t still in the room.

  He wasn’t. Obviously, the warlock’s work here was already done. Jake strode out to check the other classrooms and found the students in the same condition, but there was still no sign of Garnock.

  As he hurried back to tell the others that the kids in the other rooms needed attention, too, another, even more ominous question suddenly occurred to him.

  Where are all the teachers?

  They would have tried to help their students, surely, and Garnock wouldn’t have liked that.

  Jake rushed over to one of the older boys—he looked familiar. Yes, one of the stronger lads who had been assigned to help them carry in the presents.

  Jake figured that the older, larger boy would have weathered Garnock’s attack better than the littler ones. He pulled the woozy kid upright at his desk, then started slapping him lightly on the cheek. “Hey, wake up. What happened here?”

  “Huh? Please let me sleep. So tired…”

  He shook him. “Where’s your teacher?”

  But he had no sooner spoken the question than a muffled “Help!” came from somewhere nearby.

  Jake glanced around. His eyes widened.

  He had been so appalled by the condition of the students that he only just now noticed signs of a struggle up at the front of the classroom.

  All the bookcases had been knocked down.

  A mountain of books had fallen off the shelves, and Jake had a feeling the teacher was buried under them. He released the groggy boy. His head thunked back down onto his desk as Jake ran to help.

  Another low, muffled call came from underneath the pile of books and toppled bookcases.

  “I’m coming! Hold on!”

  Blimey, the poor scholar was buried under an entire encyclopedia.

  Unfortunately, the bookcases were too long and awkward for him to manage alone. When he lifted one end, trying to pull it up, the other end sagged all the more heavily.

  He was afraid of hurting the teacher underneath. He almost yelled for Derek to come and get the other end, but Derek was attending to the kids in the classroom across the hall.

  Scowling at the risk of any of these half-conscious students seeing him use his freakish powers, Jake had no choice but to summon up his telekinesis. He had to free the teacher before he or she was well and truly crushed under all that weight.

  Once Jake had discreetly floated the bookcases back to where they belonged, it only took a moment to dig the teacher out from under the avalanche of books. Unfortunately, the little man was so hysterical over the supernatural events he had already witnessed that all he did was babble incoherently.

  “Hey!” Jake snapped his fingers in his face. “It’s all right, you’re safe now, calm down.”

  But as soon as the teacher did so, he leaped to his feet, ran out of the room, and fled the building, his black robes flapping out behind him. Jake saw him out the window, tearing off down the drive, and shrieking at the Gryphon in the carriage as he passed.

  “You’re welcome,” Jake muttered with a scowl.

  Then the other three came in.

  “They seem to be all right,” Jake told them, but Derek and Archie gave the students a cursory check anyway. “It’s the teachers I’m worried about.”

  While he explained how he had found the teacher in this room buried under books, Madam Sylvia took some white candles out of her bag and hurried to set them in the four corners of the room, lighting them.

  She then lit a little bouquet of dried sage tied with a string and began waving it slowly in the air, walking around the perimeter of the room and speaking some sort of chant, a white-magic incantation.

  She continued this in the other classrooms, “clearing” the first floor of evil energy, so she claimed, while Archie and Derek made sure none of the kids were in too bad of shape, especially the little ones.

  But in all the classrooms, they found the kids in a similar state: draped over their chairs, snoring on their desks, or sleeping on the floor in exhaustion, as if they had been subjected to the most boring lesson of their lives.

  By feeding on their life-force, according to the Spell of a Hundred Souls, Garnock had clearly stolen all their energy.

  Hopefully, a good nap, a meal, and some time would restore them to their normal selves.

  For the teachers, it was a different story.

  Some had been dealt with more severely than others, probably depending on how hard they had fought back, trying to defend their students. Prim little Miss Tutbury was locked in her classroom closet, which had been sealed up by some devilish spell.

  “Try to be calm in there,” Madam Sylvia told her through the door. “It may take some doing, but we will get you out!”

  Miss Tutbury had fared better than the art teacher, who had been stuck to the ceiling by her own classroom glue.

  Dr. Winston, the current headmaster, must have abandoned his flask of liquor long enough to try to find out what was going on. He had made it as far as the second classroom on the left, where he had been confined in a magic circle that Garnock had drawn on the classroom floor with the chalk from the blackboard.

  Whenever Dr. Winston tried to reach his hand or step with one foot or move in any way over the chalk line, a burning sensation engulfed that part of his body, forcing him to pull back again in pain.

  The bewildered man was stuck inside the circle. “That piece of chalk is possessed, I say! It just floated up from the blackboard and started writing b-by itself!” he whispered, wide-eyed. “Perhaps this is a dream? Am I actually passed out somewhere? At my desk?”

  “That’s it,” Jake assured him. “Just a dream. Don’t worry, it’ll be fine. Just stay in that circle for now, eh?”

  They promised to free him at the first opportunity. But for the time being, at least he was relatively safe there and would not get in the way. For now, their number one task was finding Garnock and dealing with him before the wizard could do something worse to anyone else.

  Indeed, his various punishments on the teachers served as a warning to them all that the sorcerer’s strength had indeed grown after his feeding frenzy. Even if the black fog did not yet have a body, it was plain that Garnock had now grown strong enough to manipulate solid objects—from something as small as a piece of chalk or a bottle of glue, all the way up to sealing a door shut and knocking over those big, heavy bookcases.

  They’d have to be on their toes.

  “Where is he?” Jake muttered nervously under his breath as they pressed on in their sweep of the school.

  “Hiding?” Madam Sylvia suggested, still waving her smoking sage bouquet in all directions.

  “By now he knows we’re here,” Derek said in a low tone.

  Meanwhile, Archie’s head swiveled constantly back and forth, practically like an owl’s, as the boy genius kept watching for him.

  “I think Madam S
ylvia is right. He’s hiding from us,” Jake said when they had swept the second floor and still saw no sign of the evil wizard.

  “That means he’s scared. Right?” Archie asked hopefully.

  Derek shrugged. “Or he’s setting up an ambush.”

  “I found him, here!” Old Sack suddenly yelled out, appearing in the open doorway of a room behind them.

  Only Jake and Madam Sylvia turned.

  “You’ve got something?” Derek asked quickly.

  “Follow me!” Jake ran towards Old Sack, but before he could reach him, Garnock flew out of the wall with a sinister roar.

  Jake stopped in his tracks, shocked by the change in the sorcerer’s appearance. Below the waist, Garnock was still a black fog, but now, instead of a skeleton head, his face was distinct.

  Though still swathed in smoke, his upper half was that of a middle-aged man with strong, lordly features and short, spiky hair, pale as moonlight. He now had a regular sort of neck and shoulders, a chest, the top of a back, arms, and hands.

  But the rest of him was still a trailing dark cloud as he raced through the air, going after Old Sack.

  “Run!” Jake shouted, only to grab his cousin’s shoulder when Archie started to dash away. “Not you, the ghost,” he muttered.

  The headmaster ghost let out a shriek and instantly turned himself into a fast-moving orb. Old Sack flew out over the staircase, but he wasn’t fast enough.

  Garnock caught him in midair.

  “Let him go!” Jake shouted.

  “Oh, dear,” Madam Sylvia whispered, lifting her hand to her mouth.

  Grasping the orb between his newly formed hands like it was a crystal ball, Garnock shoved the whole thing into his mouth. To Jake’s horror, the evil spirit’s lower jaw unhinged like that of a shark, enabling him to swallow the orb whole.

  Jake stood aghast. He couldn’t move, could not believe what he had just witnessed. He stared, riveted with morbid fascination.

  He could not think of a single thing to say.

  Garnock gave a great gulp, then his jaw and head went back to normal.

  He turned in midair to leer at Jake in sinister satisfaction. Then he licked his lips like a frog that had just swallowed a fly. “A little dry for my taste, like all these academics. That makes number ninety-six.”

  “You killed him.”

  “Good afternoon to you, too, Lord Griffon! The Lightrider’s son. Yes, I know now who you are.” Garnock’s eyes narrowed. “And I know what you did to my poor little Mischief and Mayhem. My gargoyles.”

  “You’re a monster!” Jake choked out, taking a backward step in the hallway as Garnock floated closer.

  Moving under the school’s dingy main chandelier, the black-fog warlock tilted his head back and laughed. “Thank you very much, my lad! I shall take that as a compliment. Some of my best friends are monsters. Now then, who wants to be number ninety-seven? Here’s a tasty little morsel.”

  “You stay away from my cousin!” Jake belted out, throwing up his arm in front of Archie, and that was all the boy genius needed to hear.

  Shoving Jake’s arm out of the way, he slid the opened Spirit Box across the floor, then brought up the Phantom Fetcher with a yell and started firing wildly in all directions, cranking the brass handle at top speed.

  The Phantom Fetcher blasted out a lightning-like net of crackling, bluish energy.

  Garnock threw himself out of the way in the nick of time, then turned, looking outraged at this unexpected device. As soon as the sorcerer righted himself, he fired back at the boy genius with a ball of dark magic that only Jake could see.

  “Arch, look out!”

  It flew out of Garnock’s hand and barreled into Archie’s chest, sending him flying against the wall behind him.

  Jake stepped in front of him as Garnock swooped toward his cousin to feed. “Don’t even think about it.”

  “Quick, the spell!” Archie said, pushing his spectacles back up after they had slipped down his nose.

  “Everyone, all at once!” Madam Sylvia said.

  They had all memorized the Lightriders’ spell and together began reciting it. Jake brought up the wand and pointed it at Garnock, concentrating on the ancient magical words with all his might.

  “Thrice cursed,

  be thou bound

  who evil chose

  we now enclose

  in dark and doom—

  be thou entombed!

  So we swear it by our blood

  And victory of Holy Rood,

  Banished be forevermore.”

  Garnock drew back with a look of fear when he heard the incantation. He must have remembered its previous effect on him all too well, for he lifted his hands as if to shield himself, and immediately began chanting a counter-spell.

  Jake and the others spoke louder, reciting the Lightriders’ spell over and over in unison while Archie climbed to his feet, but nothing seemed to be happening to Garnock.

  If anything, every repetition only seemed to make him stronger. He was getting bigger and the human part of his body was growing more distinct; he now had a waist.

  Apparently, he couldn’t help laughing. “You fools! Did you think I sat in that tomb all those centuries twiddling my thumbs? What do you take me for? Leave it to a Lightrider to show a total lack of originality. Ho-hum!”

  “Everyone, stop!” Jake ordered. “He’s turning our magic against us.”

  “Very good, my clever little nugget! Maybe you’re not as thick as you look. Love the white hair, by the way. It suits you.”

  “I take it the spell didn’t work,” Archie said in a tight voice. “So what do we do now?”

  Jake glanced over his shoulder at his cousin, at a loss.

  This wasn’t in the plan.

  Madam Sylvia took charge and stepped to the fore, holding up a handful of crystals on chains and waving them at Garnock, although she couldn’t see him, which Jake thought extremely brave.

  She proceeded to lay a curse on him in the potent bardic language of old Welsh, her tone dire.

  Garnock flinched as though someone with good aim had just thrown a rock at him, but he shook it off and sneered.

  “Take that, you hag!” He threw out his hand and cast another ball of dark energy, which jolted Madam Sylvia off her feet and carried her backward toward the staircase.

  He meant to throw her down the steps.

  But before Jake could even summon up his telekinesis to save her, Derek dove, wrapping his arms around the old woman’s waist in order to take the brunt of the fall.

  Jake and Archie winced and ran to the top step as the two went bumping down the staircase, tumbling as they rolled. Madam Sylvia fainted along the way. Then Derek landed under the medium with a grunt of pain.

  Setting the dazed old woman safely aside, he came up angry. “Point to him, Jake.”

  Jake pointed at Garnock, and Derek instantly hurled his first Bowie knife. It flew right through the smoky black substance of Garnock’s body and stuck in the wall behind him.

  Garnock looked over his shoulder and arched a ghostly eyebrow in amusement at the knife hilt still shuddering in the wall. “That wasn’t very nice.”

  “Did I hit him?”

  “Yes, but it didn’t matter.”

  “Oh, really?” Derek threw the second knife with a growl of frustration.

  Garnock’s eyes narrowed. “Ah, now it’s my turn.” The sorcerer hurled a jagged silver bolt of energy at the Guardian.

  “Derek, look out!”

  The warrior crouched down and started to spin out of the way to duck behind the wall, but the bolt of magic caught him in the knee; he gasped in astonishment just before he was suddenly frozen in place.

  “What have you done to him?” Archie cried, then he raced to the nearest window and threw open the sash. “Red! Come! We need you!”

  “You are an irritating little thing,” Garnock declared.

  “Don’t you dare!” Jake yelled, but there was nothing he could do to
stop him.

  Garnock sent out an orangey-green bolt of magic from his fingertips with a snicker, and when it hit the boy genius, Archie started shrinking right before Jake’s eyes.

  His voice turned high-pitched, like the squeak of a mouse; down and down he went, until he was only pixie-sized, and when Red swooped in through the open window with an angry “Caw!” he got the same.

  “No!” Jake yelled.

  Garnock laughed hysterically as the Gryphon shrank down to the size of a dragonfly. Miniaturized Red landed on the ground beside tiny Archie, who was hollering squeaky protests at the top of his teensy lungs.

  Burning with outrage, Jake zapped Garnock with a furious bolt of telekinesis, and though the wizard had no solid matter to affect, he did stop laughing.

  Perhaps he recalled the effect that trying to feed on Jake had had on him before.

  “I’ll get you for this,” Jake vowed. “Put them back the way they were!”

  “Or what?” Garnock taunted.

  Jake’s answer was another bone-jarring jolt of telekinetic power. He sustained it for several seconds, ignoring the risks to himself of doing so.

  It would weaken him, but he was too furious to care.

  Besides, it also seemed to weaken Garnock, who dropped a few feet lower in the air when Jake cut off the beam.

  Garnock panted after Jake released him. “I’ll make you sorry for that. But first…”

  He swooped over and fed off Archie with a mighty inhalation through his mouth: ninety-seven.

  Aghast, Jake shot at him again with telekinesis, but had to be careful of hitting his itty-bitty cousin. He didn’t want to accidentally throw tiny Archie across the room.

  Garnock apparently didn’t dare feed off Red, but flew away and drained off some of Derek’s powerful life-force next in the same fashion: ninety-eight.

  “Get away from them!” Jake bellowed, racing down the steps as Garnock went over and inhaled more energy off the unconscious Madam Sylvia.

  “Ha, that’s ninety-nine!” the sorcerer declared, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. He looked younger, stronger; his face almost had some color, and Jake could see that Garnock’s spiky hair was turning blond. “I’d hide if I were you, Lord Griffon. You have very little time to run before I come back for you. Now if you’ll excuse me, it’s time to find a unicorn!”