Lethal Red Riding Hood (Dark Goddess Chronicles Book 1)

by Leonard Wilson

  They’d gone perhaps halfway across it when Nolan grabbed her wrist and stopped her, raising a finger to his lips for silence. Then he carefully reclaimed the lantern from her and doused it.

  Just before the light went out, he’d tilted his head off toward one edge of the pasture, and Elissa’s gaze had naturally followed. There, the light of another lantern bobbed beyond what must have been the bordering hedge of the pasture. With it came the determined clop of hooves from a horse unmistakably more robust than the one the girl had left on.

  It mightn’t be Riordan, Elissa knew. On a night like this, with so much chaos and so much hanging in the balance, anyone could legitimately be out and about, and whatever had brought them out would most certainly demand urgency. But it could be Riordan. She couldn’t say that whoever it was was coming from the wrong direction to be Riordan, and—apparently—neither could Nolan. And if it was Riordan, that meant all her nightmare imaginings had been spot-on.

  If it was Riordan, the one thing they could not possibly afford was to attract his notice. So they huddled there together in the blackness, with Nolan’s dark cloak pulled protectively around her to hide any glimmer the lightning might catch of her silvery robes. And they held their breath, and they listened and they waited.

  When at last the sounds of hooves and jingling harness had faded in the distance, they breathed a mutual sigh of relief. Nolan moved to relight the lantern, but Elissa grabbed at his cloak and pulled it back tightly around her. “Wait,” she whispered.

  “What is it?” he asked, peering around them into the darkness, and straining to hear anything but the wind rushing through the grasses.

  “Just cold.” She giggled quietly, pressing her back up against him. “That wind’s picked up a bite. Give me a minute more to warm up.”

  “Sure.” He chuckled, folding his arms around her. “No one will be rushing to search for us here in the night. But don’t get too comfortable. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover before the storm breaks, if we can.”

  “Where are we heading?” she asked.

  “Into the forest.”

  “What? With the fire?” He could hear her worried frown even if he couldn’t see it.

  “Blackmoon Lake’s not too far in,” he reassured her. “I’m not taking you anywhere near the castle tonight, and we both know the Tooth’s off limits, but there’s an island…”

  “Someone’s watching us!” Elissa hissed suddenly.

  Nolan released her with one arm to ease the flintlock out of his belt. “Where?” he whispered.

  “Off to the right,” Elissa whispered. “I don’t know…maybe fifty yards away? I saw him standing there when the lightning flashed.”

  “Did he move?”

  “No.” She shook her head. “Just…watching.”

  Nolan edge around to get Elissa behind him, and stood listening, waiting for the next flicker of lightning. After the better part of a minute, it finally came, its light dancing across a tall, shadowy figure in a tattered red cloak that whipped wildly in the wind. “Scarecrow.” Nolan sighed in relief, wrapping his arm comfortingly back around Elissa’s shoulder. “It’s okay.”

  “Really?” Elissa asked, not completely mollified. “That is so odd.”

  “Odd?” Nolan chuckled. “The farmer’s put them up all over.”

  “To protect crops?” Elissa asked.

  “Of course.” Nolan nodded. “Works, too.”

  “What crops?”

  “Apples. Grains. Anything that’s…”

  “No, Nolan,” Elissa hissed impatiently. “What crops?”

  The fragments of what he’d just seen clicked into place in Nolan’s head, and the red-cloaked figure appeared again in his mind’s eye, standing alone amidst the short-cropped grasses—not in an orchard, not in a field, but in a pasture, without a single thing for it to protect. “Oh,” he said finally, his mouth going dry. “I guess I should make sure, shouldn’t I?”

  He considered shouting across the distance, but didn’t want to risk attracting attention from outside the pasture, and honestly didn’t fancy finding out later that he’d been shouting at a scarecrow. He considered walking toward it, but didn’t fancy either leaving Elissa standing alone behind him or dragging her closer to anyone who might be insane enough to be standing out here in the middle of the night, in the middle of everything that was going on, just silently watching them.

  Finally, he settled on raising his pistol and leveling it at where he thought he’d seen the figure standing, but it quickly became clear his hand wasn’t steady enough right now to make that a good option, either. Still, he kept the gun leveled just in case, but concluded aloud, “No. No point getting any closer. We’re just getting out of here.” He wrapped his hand around hers again. “But I’ll keep an eye on it while you lead, to be safe.”

  Even so, Nolan felt foolish keeping an eye on what could only sensibly be a scarecrow, but he refused to let that cow him into carelessness, given it couldn’t sensibly be a scarecrow, either. So he kept his eyes on it. “No light yet,” he hissed when he heard the rattle of Elissa picking up the lantern.

  “I can’t see a thing!” Elissa protested quietly.

  “Nothing to see. We’ve got at least another hundred yards of open pasture ahead of us. Just take it slow and careful, and make the most of the lightning when it comes. But if you light that thing, it’ll…”

  The lightning came, directly overhead. The thunder rattled the lantern and their teeth alike.

  “You know what? Forget it,” Nolan said hastily. “Finding shelter just became top priority.”

  “You saw something!” Elissa said. Fumbling with the flint and tinder Nolan handed her, before she finally pushed the whole mess back at him. “This is your lantern. I can’t figure this out in the dark.”

  “No, I didn’t!” Nolan reluctantly accepted the duty of relighting the lantern and began fumbling with it himself as quickly as he could.

  “What did you see!” Elissa demanded of him again.

  “Nothing!”

  “Stop treating me like a child and just tell…”

  The lightning crackled again, and Elissa saw for herself. “I…” she began slack-jawed.

  “I told you!” Nolan snapped.

  Out in the pasture where the watcher had stood, she’d seen it clear as day: no shadowy figure, no tattered red cloak whipping about in the wind, no place for it to have run, no place for it to hide. Just…nothing. Elissa stood shivering in the biting wind, with the first tentative drops of rain rolling down her cheeks, until the lantern finally sprang back to life. Then she let Nolan take her hand again, and they ran with the storm howling at their heels.

  “Don’t move, dear.”

  Clay roused himself from dreams at the sound of the familiar, friendly voice, but allowed himself to be restrained by the firm hand pressing the cool cloth against his forehead.

  “It was a bad fall,” Grace told him. “You hit your head on a gravestone. What were you doing up on the Harrison Mausoleum, anyway? It’s not like there’s any Harrisons around anymore to complain of its condition. Not a soul would have cared if you’d waited ‘til there was help, and you know those old slates are treacherous.”

  “I’m sorry,” he apologized with heart-felt sincerity. He was paying for the indiscretion liberally, his body aching all over, but his head most of all—like he was suffering from the worst hangover ever, and then got hit on the head with a shovel for good measure. “I…” He tried to make excuses, but it was hard enough to remember having gone up there in the first place, much less recalling why.

  “You scared me witless, silly man,” she said with the sort of brave little smile used to plaster over slowly fading fear. “You know we need you alive and whole.”

  “Sorry,” he apologized again. He tried to sit up a little only to be rebuffed by a firm-but-gentle hand, and he sank back into the bed.

  “Just apologize by making a full recovery.” She kissed him on the forehead, and her sm
ile turned genuine as she gazed down at him. “I hope you’re feeling up to a bit of dinner.”

  “Definitely,” he assured her as his eyes followed her across their cottage to the crackling hearth. “I’m starving, actually.” From the smell of it, she’d gotten a rabbit from somewhere while he’d been oblivious. The aroma of the bubbling stew filled the cottage, along with the scents of wood smoke and roasting apples.

  Folk did not generally accuse Grace Ambleforth of being a beauty, with her plain, shoulder-length hair the color of damp sand, and a face still bearing some blemishes from a childhood pox, but Clay couldn’t imagine a more lovely sight to wake up to—after so many dark and disturbing dreams—than that familiar smile.

  “Aidan? How’s Aidan?” Clay asked, a sudden fear gripping his heart. “I dreamed…”

  “Our boy’s fine, dear.” Grace looked up from stirring the kettle to smile reassuringly. “He’s just out to the plots, digging a splendid hole. Took it t’ heart that he’s the man of the house while you’re abed—and he’s doing a fine job of it, all things considered. It may not be near right, but I dare say it’ll be easier for you to make it right than it would be to’ve dug the whole grave yourself. Old widow Dawson finally moved on in the night. The family will be needing it as soon as can be managed.”

  Clay breathed a relieved sigh, and began flexing his fingers experimentally to begin a catalog of how badly he’d been hurt where. He’d gotten as far as deciding he still had five working digits on each hand when Grace appeared back at his side with a steaming wooden bowl. “Now, let’s try to get some strength back in you,” she said cheerily, but Clay’s attempt at refocusing his attention on her got derailed by the rattling sound still coming from the hearth—specifically, by the distinct tapping of a ladle on the rim of the pot. When he looked, he could see Grace standing there across the room with her back to him, still tending the stew.

  “Can you sit up?” Grace-at-his-side asked, setting the bowl down on a stool by the bed and trying to wrestle him to a sitting position. Clay offered no help, but instead lay staring toward the hearth, lost in the sudden certainty that he was still dreaming. Then the woman at the fire began to turn. Not Grace, he realized with a rush of relief. Her sister.

  “No? Too much too soon?” Grace asked him worriedly. “Dear, you’re shaking like the bangles on a heathen dancing girl.” It was a friendly jab that brought him instantly back to her. They’d actually seen a heathen dancing girl once, the year the traveling show had stopped for a night at Dydford, bringing wonders from across the sea, and Clay had studied the girl with a bit too much interest for Grace to ever entirely let him live it down.

  “I’m okay,” he reassured her, struggling to work with her now. “Just weak.” Still, something plucked at his mind, about Grace’s sister and that traveling show. As much as Ivy would hang on the storytellers’ tales of distant shores, Clay had always thought it a shame she’d missed that show, with its strange people and exotic pageantry. Sadly, she’d died just the winter before.

  No, Clay told himself firmly. That had been one of the nightmares. Ivy had died in one of the nightmares—just like Grace. Just like Aidan. Those were nightmares. Those had all been nightmares. Just like the shadowy figure pulling itself out of the pot behind Ivy was a nightmare. It had to be a nightmare, because already more of it had come out of the pot than could have ever fit in.

  Its great bulk towered over Ivy now, and still the rotting nightmare beast kept coming—some huge, deranged amalgam of man and ox and rabbit, with broth and unsavory bits of carrot and things less identifiable all pouring off its matted fur like rain off of a gargoyle. Already it so filled that corner of the cottage that it had to stoop beneath the rafters, but neither of the women had noticed, and Clay’s voice caught in his throat when he tried to warn them. He watched helplessly as claws the size of scythes sprang forth from its hooves and its fixed its malevolent gaze down upon Ivy.

  “No!!!” Clay finally screamed. “Run! Get out! Wake up!”

  Turning and seeing the beast, Grace and Ivy both screamed in terror. “Not again! It can’t happen again!” He shouted, but Ivy’s blood was already everywhere, and Grace stood rooted to the spot. “Wake up, damn you!” he screamed at her. “Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!”

  In one brief glimmer of mercy, Clay did break out of the nightmare before the thing could cross the floor to Grace. He found himself somewhere cold and seemingly alone in the pitch-black dark, his arms restrained and his cheek pressed up against rough woolen cloth that must have been spread out atop unyielding stone. He lay there, sobbing and quietly cursing to himself, “Wake up. Wake up. Wake up.” Had there ever been such a thing as reality, or had he dreamed that as well?

  “Who is responsible for this rabble?!” Sister Maritine shouted. The howling wind there on the Wolf’s Tooth echoed her demand, and the lightning underscored it. She was exhausted. She was angry. She was even starting to feel the unaccustomed roiling of fear in her stomach, though anyone who lasted long in the Inquisition would reflexively respond to fear by stoking that into anger, too.

  “Which part of it, Sister?” A man with pike and musket, wearing the Haywood livery, stood his ground while the rest of the crowd shrank back. He mostly managed to keep his voice level. He also made a fair point, given the motley assortment of workers, guards, and refugees from the wildfire that had roused themselves from trying to sleep in order to come see what the latest commotion was about. “I suppose I’m as responsible for the lot as anyone actually here right now.”

  “Congratulations,” Maritine snapped. “You’re now an acting representative of the Inquisition as well. The witch we’re hunting is on the Tooth, and growing more brazen by the hour. If we don’t find her before dawn, I’m making no promises that any of you will have homes to return to. Single out the most trustworthy of your men, and use them to separate everyone the lot of you can vouch for from everyone who might be suspect. Anyone not above suspicion needs to be confined wherever you can safely put them.

  “I’ll leave an experienced detail to guard and question the prisoners, but we’ll need most of our strength to go back out hunting the slopes. You’ll organize whoever you haven’t detained into groups of half a dozen each to scour the cathedral site for anyone who might be hiding or anything suspicious. Do well, and you’ll be rewarded. But if I find the witch was up here and you let her slip through your fingers, I’ll make sure you wish she’d turned you into something vile and stepped on you, so that you didn’t have to deal with me. Is any part of that not clear?”

  “No,” the man answered in a tone that could have been taken for any number of meanings, though enthusiasm was certainly not among them. “I believe I understand, Sister.”

  “Then get started!” Maritine bellowed, and she fell back away from the crowd toward where her followers waited. How, how, how had the witch snatched the strongest of their knights right out of their own ranks without being seen?! She ground her knuckles into her forehead in frustration. Unbelievable enough that the witch had slain Sister Shoshona with Riordan standing so close he’d actually seen it happen, but this was far too much.

  Maritine had fantasized often enough about the arrival of some sudden field promotion, but now that it had actually happened, she’d found it less exhilarating than in those fantasies. She’d always imagined herself as more prepared for whatever evil she happened to be fighting at the time. Despite their wily reputation, all the witches she’d faced to date had proven rather predictable and by-the-book. Vicious, certainly, but when it came right down to it they’d lacked the power to resist a trained, organized expedition of inquisitors, and most of them had even had the good sense to simply accept their fate when faced with the might of Seriena’s chosen. This witch not only seemed to possess unprecedented power, but she was using it to actively stalk her own hunters.

  The world as Maritine had known it was being turned on its head, and that was the last thing she could admit to anybody. This was the trial that
would make or break her as an inquisitrix, and the moment she admitted to weakness or a loss of faith, all would be lost.

  “Tetch,” she beckoned to the dour little man on his vicious-looking white pony. “You’re the only one I can trust to stay alert through the night and take charge of the prisoners as they’re rounded up. If the witch is among them, a moment’s inattention could mean disaster.”

  “I could just break all their ankles t’ be safe, Sister,” he nodded respectfully.

  Managing to suppress a groan, Maritine shook her head. “The cathedral’s had enough setbacks, and men with broken ankles can have trouble raising walls. Try not to break any bits you don’t really need to.”

  “As you say, Sister.”

  Maritine picked a couple of other knights to stand watch, and ordered the rest of the company to dismount and grab what sleep they could where they were, while the prisoners were being rounded up. They’d all had a rough day, and were in for a rougher night. A catnap before attempting to hunt down a powerful witch on the slopes of the Wolf’s Tooth by lantern light seemed like the bare minimum nod to sanity. It would also give her fatigue-addled brain some precious time to dream up a strategy on how to go about this.

  When they woke, she’d leave behind their two sentries to help Tetch, and a couple of the sisters to begin interrogations. For now, though, she laid her head on her cloak against the rocky ground and slipped into an uneasy sleep that wavered back and forth between dreams of heroically dragging the dreadful witch of the Wolf’s Tooth—beaten bloody and in chains—before the grand high inquisitrix, and nightmares of being turned into some tiny animal or other who inevitably found herself pounced upon and devoured by a monstrous, white cat.

  The cycle of dreams didn’t break until after one particularly gut-wrenching transformation into a field mouse, Maritine found herself picked up by the tail, instead, dangling upside down and staring into the face of the still-more-or-less human witch. In her dream, the witch took on the likeness of one of those macabre scarecrows she’d seen over and over while searching field and orchard that day—draped in the tattered red cloak, hood framing a skull with flowing red hair.