As Serafina charged toward him, Uriah did not flee or duck.
He threw his hands in one direction and then the other. A mighty wind kicked up, casting out dark, swirling tornadoes that tore up sticks, leaves, and other debris from the ground in front of her. A horrible, loud rushing sound overtook everything else.
Uriah looked straight at her, ready for her attack.
“Are you surprised to see me, Black One?” he roared. “Did you think the swat of a little cat could kill me?” His voice boomed so loudly that it pierced her ears and shook her to the core. “You can’t kill me!”
Serafina knew that Uriah wouldn’t be standing so fearless if he didn’t think he could sustain her attack, and it was foolish to attack him straight on. But it was all part of the trick. She spotted Waysa charging out of the forest at full speed toward Uriah’s back. And she knew they had him.
She leapt straight at Uriah’s face. Waysa leapt on his back at the same moment. The two catamounts landed upon the man, ripping into him with their tearing claws.
Screaming in outrage, Uriah reached back and grabbed Waysa, pulled him over his shoulder, and threw him off with incredible strength, heaving him so far that Waysa went tumbling across the clearing. Uriah had always been strong, but nothing like this.
Their well-thought-out plan of having Rowena cast her spells, Braeden charge in with their animal allies, and the two catamounts attack from two different directions at once had already gone wrong. Their plans had been wrecked. There was nothing left for Serafina to do but fight!
Clinging to Uriah’s chest and legs with all four of her clawed paws, Serafina pulled her head back and slammed her long, curved fangs into Uriah’s neck. Uriah screamed in pain and grabbed at her, but Waysa came tearing back into the battle and leapt upon his arms with teeth and claws. On the ground, Gidean charged in, chomped onto Uriah’s leg, and pulled viciously, snarling and biting, trying to yank Uriah off his feet.
As Uriah struggled to pull Serafina from his chest, she pulled back and bit again, this time, aiming straight for his throat. Her teeth clamped onto his windpipe and cut off his air. Her mother had taught her that big cats kill their prey not just by tearing into them with claws, or breaking their necks, but by blocking their windpipes and asphyxiating them, and that was what she was determined to do now. This time, she couldn’t just wound him, she had to kill him. For her peace, for Braeden, for Biltmore, for all that she’d fought for, she had to destroy him. She clenched her teeth and would not let go.
As Serafina fought she glanced back toward Braeden.
He’d been struck down from his horse and hit the ground hard, but he rolled and quickly put out his burning clothes. He immediately scrambled over to his wounded horse lying on the ground. He put his open hands on the horse’s body, desperately trying to heal his oldest friend, but his face clouded with anguish as he realized it was too late. His friend was already dead.
Braeden wiped his eyes and ran over to Rowena. It was hard for Serafina to see as she struggled with Uriah, but she made out the silhouette of what looked like some kind of stag with a rack of horns kneeling down, as Braeden dragged the bloody and unconscious Rowena onto its back.
“Take her to safety,” he told the animal, as it rose to its feet and drove into the depth of the forest.
A pack of a dozen wolves emerged from the trees, snarling and snapping, as they charged into battle against the sorcerer.
“Attack his arms,” Braeden yelled, pointing toward Uriah. “Protect Serafina. Bring him down!”
Uriah thrashed wildly to dislodge her, but Serafina held fast, her panther teeth clamped onto his throat. He grabbed at her with his clacking clawed hands, but Gidean, Waysa, and the wolves attacked him from all directions, biting his arms and legs, preventing him from pulling her away.
If she could just hold on for a few more seconds, they’d kill Uriah once and for all.
Serafina knew this was the ultimate battle. All the allies of the forest had come together at this moment to fight. It was like the battle that her mother and father had fought and lost twelve years before. But this time, she was going to win. They were going to finally defeat the most dangerous enemy the forest had ever faced.
Uriah struck Waysa with a heavy blow, knocking him away with his arm. Waysa went tumbling across the ground, but before the catamount even stopped rolling, he spun around and leapt back at Uriah with a vicious snarl, hitting him with such force that it tackled him to the ground with Serafina still attached.
Serafina buried her fangs deeper into Uriah’s throat. Through the nerves in the base of her teeth, she could feel the force clamping onto his windpipe, and the slowing of the air to his lungs. He was the storm-creech, the clawed creature, but he still had to breathe. She could feel his struggle diminishing beneath her as she slowly cut off his life.
But suddenly, Serafina felt Uriah’s body shaking beneath her, like he’d become possessed by a horrible spirit. His chest expanded with new strength and he began to rise to his feet. He kicked Gidean away from him, sending the dog somersaulting across the ground. Then he grabbed Waysa, tore his claws out of his skin, and hurled the catamount away like an empty sack.
Uriah kicked the wolves off his legs and threw them off his arms. The wolves fell away from him with blazing eyes as he stood to his full height. Then a black, dirty wind began to rip into the wolves around him.
“Now!” Braeden shouted. “Attack him!” A massive bear charged in and slammed into Uriah. Serafina’s body swung hard with the force of the blow, her legs and tail dangling now. It took all her strength to hold on as her enemy struck desperately at her side and tore at her head and tried to pull her away.
Yes, pull! she urged him in her mind. Pull! Yank me away and rip out your own throat!
And through all this, Serafina held on. No matter what happened, she wasn’t going to let go.
But then Uriah burst forth with a deafening explosion that shocked everything around them.
Braeden and the wolves were thrown to the ground. Even the bear went down.
Waysa was hurled through the air, hit a tree, and collapsed, his limp body dangling in the branches, his eyes closed.
Gidean tumbled away, his body dragging through the dirt, biting and twisting, until he finally lay still.
With a terrible new strength, Uriah grabbed Serafina’s head and fangs with his hands, and began prying her teeth slowly out of his neck, his fingers dripping with his own blood.
“I told you, you can never kill me!” he spat at her.
She growled and bit harder and tried to stop him from dislodging her teeth, but there was nothing she could do. He tore her off him and slammed her to the ground so hard that it knocked the wind out of her. Then he burst away in an explosion of black air, leaving great flares of orange flame rising all around them.
They had ambushed him with their fiercest allies and all their strength, but he had escaped their attack.
Serafina lay on the ground, stunned. She lifted her head, her eyes looking frantically through the smoke, trying to make sense of the destruction. Was Waysa still alive? Was Braeden still fighting?
The dead and wounded wolves lay strewn across the clearing, their bodies burned and broken.
She glimpsed the bear barreling away through the burning forest, his fur singed by the flames as he ran.
Her heart lurched when she saw Waysa’s long lion body hanging in the tree, dangling down from the branches. She still couldn’t see if he was alive or dead, but he wasn’t moving.
She had to get herself up. Through all the shock and pain of it, through all the strikes and bruises, she had to rise. But as she began to move and breathe again, the blazing-hot air of the burning trees around her scorched her throat and lungs. The forest was on fire.
She gazed through the orange, hazy, firelit clearing. A jolt of fear ripped through her when she spotted Braeden’s body lying on the ground, crumpled and still.
Powered by a new surge of energy,
she shifted into human form and scrambled toward him, pushing her way through the swirling smoke and embers. When she finally reached him, his eyes were closed. His wounded dog lay beside him. Piles of dead crows and wolves lay all around him.
She dropped to her knees at Braeden’s side.
“Braeden, wake up!” she shouted as she grabbed him by his coat and pulled him up.
Finally, he started awake with a violent gasp, and looked around at his fallen friends in horror.
“So many of them are dead!” Braeden said in despair, overwhelmed and disoriented.
“We’ve got to move, Braeden!” Serafina shouted, trying to shake him out of it as she coughed from the smoke. “We’ve got to help who we can and get out of here!”
Her chest filled with new hope when Braeden came to his senses and started pulling wolves up onto their feet.
She scanned back through the smoke toward Waysa. Where the fire was burning across the flat ground, it moved slowly, but on the steep slopes around them, the flames tore through the thick vegetation in blinding blazes, sparks and flames swirling upward into the glowing orange sky. She heard the sharp crackling of burning branches all around them, and as the sap within the trees boiled, the tree trunks exploded. Her heart was racing with fear, but there was no time to lose.
She ran over to the tree where Waysa’s body was hanging and started climbing. Its trunk was so hot that the sap was popping and steaming, dripping out of it like blood. She knew the tree was going to explode, but she had to keep going.
She climbed frantically out onto the branches. She held Waysa’s catamount head in her hands. The concussion of the blast had knocked him unconscious.
“Waysa!” she shouted, pushing hard at his body. “We’ve got to go!”
She felt a sudden flare of intense heat below her. Flames were spiraling up the trunk of the tree. There was no way to climb down. The sap-filled branches around her began to hiss and boil. Every breath she took from the hot, smoky air felt like she was sucking fire down her throat.
She had no choice. As the flames burned into the creaking, collapsing branches, she wrapped her arms around Waysa’s body and jumped.
A sledgehammer of pain thundered through her shoulder and ribs when she hit the ground with a heavy grunt. But she scrambled to her feet. She grabbed Waysa by the shoulders and tried to drag him, pulling and heaving, as the burning tree collapsed around them. She fell to the ground as Waysa finally woke and looked around him in confusion.
“We’ve got to go!” she shouted at him, and Waysa rose to his feet.
On her way back to Braeden, she pulled Gidean up onto his unsteady legs. “Come on, boy, let’s go, come on!” And the wounded dog sluggishly, obediently, tried to follow her.
“Everyone get up!” she shouted at the surviving wolves as the flames burned around them and the clearing filled with hot choking smoke.
But they had only moments to live before the fire engulfed them. The trees that surrounded them were all aflame and there was no way out.
She wanted to use the wind to blow the flames away, but sensed that it would just make the fire burn faster. She thought about trying to draw water out of the rocky ground, but she knew it wouldn’t work. She looked up at the clouds, but she had no idea how to reach up there and make them pour down with rain.
It seemed so hopeless. She looked all around her at the walls of orange fire. The smoke choked her throat. Her eyes stung. The heat burned her skin. They were completely surrounded by flames.
“If we don’t find a way out of this, we’re going to die here,” she shouted to Braeden as she peered through the burning forest looking for a path through.
“No we’re not,” Braeden said fiercely.
Serafina turned in the direction he was looking. The night sky above them was suddenly full of birds. Hawks and eagles and ospreys.
“Lie down,” Braeden said.
“What?” she said in confusion.
“Lie down!” he ordered her. “Waysa, you too. Lie down!”
Waysa came stumbling over to them in human form. As she and Waysa lay down on the ground, Braeden kept shouting at them. “Now spread out your hands and legs. Splay yourself out!”
Serafina had no idea why Braeden wanted her to do these things, but she did as he said. Suddenly, she felt the brush of moving air above her. Many pairs of large, powerful talons gripped her arms and legs, her wrists and her ankles.
“Go!” Braeden shouted to the birds. “Take them!”
Serafina felt her limbs lifting upward, then her body. She couldn’t keep the panic from sweeping through her. They were lifting her off the ground. But she didn’t want to leave the ground! She liked the ground!
But suddenly, she was in the air, she was floating, she was flying. As she flew upward, she saw the intensity of the forest fire all around them. The mountain was on fire. Braeden’s figure standing in the center of the tiny clearing became smaller and smaller as the birds lifted her. Then she was flying across the canopy of the forest like a hawk, above the flames and the smoke.
Waysa was flying beside her, hanging from the talons of the hawks and ospreys like she was.
Within seconds, the blaze of the forest fire fell behind them. The night became dark and cool again as they flew up into the clear moonlit sky over the dark green canopy of the untouched forest.
Serafina craned her neck and looked behind her, searching for Braeden. She could see him in the clearing surrounded by the fire. He was shouting commands as hundreds of hawks and other birds grabbed hold of Gidean and the surviving wolves. The flames were pressing in, the smoke choking him, but he wouldn’t leave his friends behind. He was determined to save them all.
“Get out of there, Braeden,” Serafina said, but she knew it was useless.
When she looked back a final time, the flames had engulfed the clearing. There was nothing left but fire and great torrents of sparks rising up from the top of the burning mountain.
“Wait,” she called to the hawks that were carrying her. “Wait! Go back! Go back for Braeden!”
But they didn’t understand her. And they didn’t turn.
The birds carried her and Waysa high over the trees and the mountains, which rolled dark and quiet below them. The sorcerer’s storm had cleared. Up in the sky, a feathery scattering of white clouds drifted past an impossibly bright moon, with a crush of glittering stars above. Looking down again, she spotted what she knew must be the French Broad River, dark and shimmering, as it wound through the mountains.
As they flew slowly up the valley of the great river, she saw Biltmore House on top of the hill, its gray towers striking up into the sky, the moonlight touching its sides.
But all she could think about was the valiant friend they had left behind.
Serafina fell to her knees on the ground in front of Biltmore, her chest heaving with anguish. But she quickly got herself up to her feet again and looked toward the mountain in the distance. She could no longer see the flames. The top of the mountain where they had been fighting had burned black, a thick cloud of smoke pouring from its heights.
Waysa stood beside her, gazing up at the mountain with her, his face filled with dread.
Biltmore’s grounds had been badly damaged by the floods, and some of the house’s foundation had been torn away, but for now the storm had receded, and the sun was coming up.
“I’m going back up there to find him,” Serafina announced and started on foot toward the mountain.
“Wait,” Waysa said, grabbing her arm.
Serafina’s stomach felt like it was twisting into knots. She hated standing still when she could be moving. “We can’t wait here, Waysa. Come on, we’ve got to help him.”
But Waysa turned and looked at something in the distance.
Waves of morning mist were rolling through the trees and across the wide expanse of grass in front of Biltmore, the rising sun casting rays of light between the waves, dappling the front of the house in moving bands of gold.
“The a-wi-e-qua have brought him home,” Waysa said softly, his voice filled with awe.
Serafina didn’t understand what Waysa said until she saw the herd of elk emerging slowly and silently from the mist of the forest.
The elk of the Blue Ridge were large and magnificent forest creatures of old that Serafina knew only from the drawings in Mr. Vanderbilt’s books. Seeing the elk here, now, was impossible, for the last of the mountain elk had been killed by hunters more than a hundred years before. Then she remembered the large, stag-like animal that Braeden had called in to carry Rowena to safety the night before.
Was it possible that a few had survived all these years, hidden deep in the mountain coves and the shaded marshes where no one could find them? Had they come out now because Braeden had asked for their help?
The lead elk was an enormous, thousand-pound beast with a massive rack of antlers rising some four feet above his head like the majestic crown of a forest king. Braeden rode on the elk king’s back, holding the thick, dark brown mane with one hand and the wounded Rowena draped over the elk’s neck with the other. The elk king led the herd in a slow procession across the grass toward her and Waysa.
Serafina felt a swoosh of relief crash through her. She rushed forward and helped her tired, bruised, soot-stained friend down from the elk’s back. His clothes were burned and torn, but it appeared that he hadn’t suffered any major wounds.
Waysa gently pulled Rowena’s limp body from the elk’s back and carried her in his arms, her long hair hanging loosely toward the ground.
Braeden turned to the elk king. “Thank you, my friend,” he whispered.
As the elk herd turned slowly back into the forest and gradually disappeared into the morning mist, Serafina knew that she would probably never see them again.
She wrapped Braeden in her arms. “I was so worried about you,” she said. “What were you doing up there? You almost got yourself killed!”
Serafina and the Splintered Heart Page 20