by Dante King
“I thought werewolves were like vampires. You know, people have to be bitten by one to become one. They become uncontrollable beasts when they change. They have to be under the light of the full moon. You know, all that.”
“That is correct. Under most circumstances, lycanthropy is a curse. The afflicted cannot control themselves when they are in werewolf form, and they cannot control when they change. The full moon is the most common trigger, but there are others too. This cloak changes all of that. It allows the wearer to become a werewolf, with all of the brute power and savage speed a werewolf possesses. The difference is that the cloak’s wearer retains full control of their mind while in werewolf form. And you can choose when and where you will transform, and change back into a human with the same freedom.”
“All of the advantages of being a werewolf, but none of the curse.”
Friya smiled again. “Correct.”
“Well, what are you waiting for? Sling that cloak over your shoulders and get your werewolf on!”
“Right here, right now?”
“Why not? Shit, whenever I get a new weapon, I can’t wait to try it out! Come on, show me what Friya the werewolf can do.”
“I’m as excited about this as you are, Vance, but… I’ve never done anything like this before.”
“You do know how to use the cloak, right?”
“Y-yes. I have studied the old tomes that speak of how to use it, and I have dreamed many times about it.”
“Then you have to do like I would: dive straight in. No ifs, no buts, no hesitation. Just go for it.”
“All right,” she said, all jittery. “But can we do it in private, just you and me? I don’t want the others to see if… if something goes wrong.”
I turned and spoke to Rollar, who was riding along on his direbear a few yards away. “Rollar, Friya, and I are just heading into the forest for a few minutes. Lead the army on, and we’ll catch up with you when we’re done.”
Rollar chuckled. “All right, Lord Vance. But don’t take too long in the bushes, see? I’ve heard about your—how should I put it—powers of endurance, and you won’t want to have to run five miles to catch up when you’re done, eh?”
I laughed. “Seriously, we’ll just be five minutes.”
“A quickie, eh, Lord Vance? Nothing wrong with that, nothing wrong with that at all!”
“Sure, Rollar—a ‘quickie.’ I’ll be back soon; you take charge.”
He nodded and took my spot at the head of the army. Friya and I dismounted our respective rides and walked off into the trees. Once we were out of sight of the army, she stripped off her furs and stood naked. With the beautiful woman before me, I somehow managed to remain in control of my higher faculties.
“Not that I’m objecting,” I said, my eyes locked on her gorgeous naked body, “but do you really think we have time for this?”
“I’m not taking my clothes off so that we can fuck,” she said, although she couldn’t help angling her hips and turning her body slightly away to give me the most enticing view. “I have to be naked before I put the Cloak of Changing on. Clothes or other items would interfere with the changing process.”
“Oh, I see,” I said, a little disappointed that we weren’t actually going to squeeze a quickie in. “Well, go on then, get it over with before you get me so hard that I can’t stop myself…”
Friya grinned and slipped the enchanted wolfskin over her shoulders. She whispered some magic words, then, abruptly, her entire body was swallowed by a whirling brown tornado that appeared out of nowhere. It spun crazily for about three seconds before it disappeared as quickly as it had materialized. Friya was gone too, and in her place stood a seven-foot-tall werewolf.
I’d heard all about werewolves, of course, but I’d never seen one. Her lupine face bore massive fangs, and her eyes glowed with a bright yellow light. Unlike a wolf, she stood on two legs, her body muscular and her posture bent. On the long fingers of her massive, furry hands were huge sickle-shaped claws. A mere mortal would have run screaming at the sight of this terrifying beast.
“Damn,” I murmured. “You look like you could do some serious killing.”
The werewolf let out an unthreatening growl. I figured Friya could understand what I was saying but obviously couldn’t speak while in this form.
“Show me what you can do,” I said.
She dropped down onto all fours and sprinted through the trees at a blistering pace. There was no way even the fastest runner in the world would have much of a chance of escaping a werewolf.
“Damn, you’re fast. Let’s see how strong you are.”
She raced back to me and looked around for something to test her strength. There was a fallen pine nearby, a large, rotten log that even Drok would not have been able to pick up. Friya picked it up with ease and tossed it through the woods. It exploded with a deafening crack against another tree. She roared with delight, a tremendous, raspy sound that would have struck fear into the hearts of anyone within a three-mile radius.
“It looks like you’re a little brawnier as a werewolf than you were as a woman,” I remarked with a wink. “Good. You’ll be able to fight as ferociously as any of us. Better change back now though, before the army gets too far ahead of us.”
She nodded and growled. Again, the brown tornado appeared and disappeared before I found the gorgeous Friya naked before me again, no sign at all that she’d been a huge werewolf only moments before. As tempting as it was to have some fun with that stunning body, we didn’t have the time.
When we returned, Anna—who had been quiet for a while—was waiting for me up front. She looked concerned.
“What’s wrong, Anna?” I asked.
“It’s Lucielle,” she said. “She’s in terrible danger. I can feel it.”
“How do you know that?”
“Well, for one thing, I can feel the power of the Beauty Mirror fading. And I don’t know how to explain this, but I’ve always had some sort of strong connection with the Charm Goddess. Through this ineffable tie, I can feel that she is in pain, that she is growing weaker.”
Friya nodded grimly. “This is a sure sign that the Charm Goddess is in great peril,” she said. “Many gods link themselves to a mortal and can send messages of distress through their mortal link. Also, in my own dreams, I have felt a terrible urgency coming from the direction of Lucielle’s fortress. I am not as closely linked to the Charm Goddess as someone like Anna, but I can sense it nonetheless. As I said yesterday, time is running out.”
We were on a knife edge. If we were too slow, and my uncle managed to complete the sacrifice, the strength of my army wouldn’t matter. Nothing would matter very much at all. The Demogorgon would be permanently materialized in this realm, and that would be the end of it. As powerful as I was now, I was still no match for a demon of the Ancient World. Any battle against the creature and my uncle’s forces—whose strength would be exponentially magnified by the presence of the Demogorgon—would be hopeless.
“Mur told us the fortress is a two-day march,” I said, “but if we rode really hard, without stopping, we could get there in a couple of hours.”
“That would kill my horse,” Friya said. “And any other horse, for that matter. It’s impossible.”
I grinned. “Look behind you, ladies! There are plenty of mounts who don’t need to rest, don’t get tired, and can’t die unless they get pulverized by a fucking Frost Giant’s club! Take your pick; you can ride a skeletal horse, an undead direwolf, or a zombie war-spider. I’m on Fang, who doesn’t get tired either. We can leave right now at a gallop and maintain that pace until we get to Lucielle’s fortress in a few hours.”
“What if we ride into an ambush by Rodrick’s forces?” Friya asked. “Your army will be almost two days away. Even with our magical powers, I can’t imagine we’d be able to hold up for that long against overwhelming odds.”
“It’s a risk we have to take. If it happens, at least we go down fighting my uncle with everything w
e have, and hell, maybe we can even stop the sacrifice, even if we’re all killed in the process. It would be worth it. And if we wait, and the sacrifice does take place, none of this will matter. We’ll all be dead anyway.”
My reasoning left Frya convinced.
I summoned the rest of my party and explained the plan. Elyse, who after all this time was still creeped out by my undead creatures, was the most reluctant, but eventually, I convinced her to ride one of the direwolves, who didn’t look quite as zombie-like as the others. Friya also decided to ride an undead direwolf; Isu, Rami-Xayon, and Drok each chose a war-spider; and Anna picked a skeletal horse. As for Rollar, I left him in command of the army, to rendezvous with us in two days. Hopefully, we’d still be alive at that time, and Rollar wouldn’t arrive at Lucielle’s fortress and find only ground man meat and prize cuts of god brawn.
“All right, everyone ready?” I asked.
They cheered.
“Let’s ride! Full gallop until we get there!”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
As we set off, I launched my undead harpy into flight, connecting my mind and spirit to it so that I could catch bird’s-eye glimpses of the terrain ahead. Fang, meanwhile, took off like a loosed arrow from a longbow. I had become accustomed to the swaying motion when he ran, but anyone else would have been puking down the side of his neck already.
Behind me, the others kept the blistering pace I was setting. As the miles streamed by beneath the feet of our mounts, we began to see signs of abandoned human settlements. I hoped the villagers had fled, because otherwise, I was sure they had been taken by my uncle. He was leaving a serious trail of death and destruction in his wake. If all these were sacrifices to the Blood God, I wasn’t looking forward to finding out firsthand how much his powers had increased. I was hoping to snatch another skill or two from the gray tree myself before I faced my uncle, if I had the time. The only thing I could really afford to focus on was getting to Lucielle’s fortress as quickly as possible.
We galloped through fields, down into valleys, up and over hills, and charged through fast-flowing, icy rivers. All the while, the sun kept creeping toward the mountain tops in the distance. I kept Talon flying about a mile ahead of us so that I could spot any traps my uncle might have set for us through its eyes.
Finally, soon after the harpy gave me a heads-up, the entire party caught sight of Lucielle’s fortress. It was a mere smudge of white on the horizon, but I could feel my uncle’s power emanating from the place. The closer we neared, the more I sensed the crowded presence of Death.
What if we were too late? What if Lucielle was already dead, and the Demogorgon unleashed on the world?
If that was the case, I’d just have to throw every ounce of my power up against the Demogorgon and my uncle. I might not be able to take them out completely, but I sure as fuck could hurt them badly.
As we galloped across the grassy meadows around Lucielle’s fortress, the castle came into clearer focus. It must have once been a magnificent sight to behold, all blazing white walls, tall turrets, and soaring spires with colorful pennants fluttering in the chilly breeze. But even from a couple of miles away, we could see the place was in ruins. Half of the towers had collapsed, destroyed by siege engines, and the walls around the fortress had been turned into piles of rubble. We were too late to save the fortress, but were we too late to save Lucielle?
Anna galloped up next to me. Her beautiful face was a mess of worry and anxiety.
“Something terrible is happening to Lucielle, Vance,” she exclaimed, her eyes rimmed with tears. “I can feel it, I can just feel it! I think that… that we’re too late.”
“Just keep your calm, Anna,” I yelled, the rush of the wind against our racing bodies taking some of the harshness out of my shout. “We don’t know that yet. We need all our wits about us.”
“I can feel it too,” Friya remarked grimly, thundering along on her undead direwolf to my right. “Something evil is happening. I hope that the worst has not already come to pass.”
“Whatever else has happened, before I breathe my last, I’m gonna rip my uncle’s fucking heart out of his chest. Mark my words.”
Now that we were close enough to know we wouldn’t be ambushed, I closed my eyes, relying on Fang to carry me safely (which of course, he would do), and catapulted my mind up into Talon’s body. Controlling it with the expert finesse of a puppetmaster, I flapped its wings hard and sent it up a good mile or so above the ground, then surged on and circled Lucielle’s fortress. I hoped the Charm Goddess might be holed up in one final safe cellar or walled-in courtyard of the castle and that we could charge in and save her at the last second, just as Rodrick and his minions were about to batter the final door down. But what I saw through the harpy’s eyes soon showed me this was nothing but an empty fantasy.
The formerly exquisite, fairy-tale-looking castle had been smashed to smithereens. The damage my party was able to see from the ground was only a small part of the destruction my uncle’s war machines and troops had wrought. Not only were the outer walls reduced to rubble, but almost all of the towers were shot full of house-sized holes, probably from some monstrously huge trebuchet or catapult, and many of the tall towers and spires had collapsed. The buildings inside the castle had been demolished for the most part. The scale of the destruction was insane. It was obvious there had been incredibly fierce fighting here, and it was equally obvious who had won.
When I swooped the harpy down low to examine the ground situation, I saw the bodies. Corpses of servants; corpses of troops equipped in ornate armor that shone like chrome; corpses of other troops, likely my uncle’s, wearing red and brown armor. There were far fewer of the latter. To the credit of the Charm Goddess, her soldiers seemed to have made a number of valiant last stands throughout the castle, doing their utmost to protect their goddess.
It didn’t seem like they’d shown their bravery very recently though. These bodies were not fresh. They weren’t rotting yet, but they had been dead for at least a day, maybe two or three. This meant, I realized with a terrible sinking feeling in the pit of my belly, that my uncle had taken Lucielle to the Temple of Blood. The only question worth considering now was how close he was to sacrificing her in the Blood Ritual, if he hadn’t already done so.
I jerked my mind out of the harpy’s body and back into my own. I ordered my party to stop. Confused, they reined in their mounts, slowed down, and eventually came to a stop in a cloud of dust.
“It’s all over up ahead,” I muttered. “My uncle has come and gone. He’s already got Lucielle. All we can do now is head straight to the Temple of Blood and hope we’re not too late.”
Anna let out a piercing cry that had us all spin around. Her eyes rolled back in her head, and she started frothing at the mouth.
“Elyse, you’re a healer,” I said. “Can you help her?”
“Help me get her off her horse, quickly.” Elyse jumped off her undead mount and raced over to Anna.
I followed suit and gently lifted the convulsing girl off her skeletal horse. Before I could lay her down on the ground, her eyes suddenly went back to normal, and she stopped shaking. She began to speak, but it was not her voice coming out of her mouth.
“Vance Chauzec, God of Death,” a hypnotic feminine voice said, “I have a message for you.”
Rami-Xayon jumped off her undead war-spider and jogged over to us.
“Lucielle, the Charm Goddess is with us!” she said, staring alternately and me and Anna. “Vance, can you not feel the presence of another deity?”
It was true. I couldn’t tell exactly how I knew it, but the woman in my arms had temporarily transformed into a goddess. Lucielle was using Anna as a mouthpiece.
“Rodrick has me,” she said, “and will begin his ritual of sacrifice at dawn. It will be a blood dawn, where the sun rises in a shade of pure red. He has taken me to the Temple of Blood, and here I am a prisoner. I am greatly weakened and badly wounded, and I am using the last reserves of my st
rength to send you this message. You must do everything you can to stop the sacrifice and destroy this vile Temple.”
“I’m on it, Lucielle,” I said. “How do I do it? How do I destroy the Temple of Blood?”
“I… can’t… hold on… much… longer,” Lucielle murmured, her voice becoming terribly faint. “What you… need is… in the… crypt of… my ruined castle… buried… under… beauty…”
Anna’s eyes rolled back in their sockets once again, and she started convulsing. When the fit passed, she gasped, coughed weakly, and opened her eyes. She looked around, confused and surprised.
“Vance, why are you holding me?” she asked. “What’s going on?”
“Lucielle just sent an urgent message through you,” I said. “We have until dawn to stop the sacrifice. But to completely destroy the Temple of Blood, we need to get something from her castle. I don’t know what the hell it is, but it’s buried in the crypt, ‘under beauty,’ whatever the fuck that means. We have to act now.”
Everyone agreed, and we remounted and rode like the wind to the wrecked castle. I used my harpy to reconnoiter the place. Thankfully, there were no traps or ambushes.
The drawbridge to the huge, gleaming white castle was still lowered when we arrived at the gates. These had been smashed in by an enormous battering ram, and we raced on into the castle. I’d seen it all through the eyes of my harpy, but it was something else to see it at ground level, to smell it, to hear whatever it was crunching and squelching underfoot.
Bodies had been skewered, decapitated, limbs hacked off, disemboweled, burnt beyond recognition—yeah, this had been a hell of a fight. Death saturated the air. The least I could do was feast on it, draw in the energy. If needed, I could raise all of these corpses in the blink of an eye and have a zombie army at my disposal, but they were as good as useless to me out here. The Temple of Blood had to be at least a full night’s gallop away, and an army of marching zombies would take up to four times longer. Besides, I needed to conserve all of my power for the upcoming fight against my uncle and his minions, and for the speedy search for Lucielle’s mystery object.