A string of lights in the distance illuminated what looked like a town gathering of sorts. We could hear voices. Laughing. Shouting. Some screaming. I looked at Tony. He was looking at Carlos. I swear sometimes the two of them can communicate telepathically just by making eye contact.
Ursula, perhaps thinking the same thing, said simply, “I agree.”
Tony looked at her strangely. “You do?”
“Aye.”
He gave her a shrug. “All right then. Let’s go.”
The three started across the knee-high river towards the lights. I caught up with Ursula, snagged her arm and pulled her back. “Hey,” I whispered. “Back there you said you agreed.”
“Aye.”
“Did you know what the guys were thinking?”
“Nay, I knew not their thoughts, but mine.”
“Why did you say you agreed?”
“What matter of difference would it have made? `Twould have been my answer either way.”
“Ah, you were fucking with them.”
“Aye.”
I slapped her on the back and pushed her onward. “It’s fun, isn’t it?”
She didn’t answer, but I saw the dimple in the side of her cheek deepen. She was definitely starting to enjoy her adventure. It made me glad Dominic hadn’t come along. He can be such a killjoy at times. Deep down, I believe that Ursula is a real rebel rouser. After all, she is a part of me. She just needs a little coaxing sometimes.
We crossed the shallow river and proceeded through an open field of dried, black reeds that crackled underfoot like a kindled fire. Their hushed whispers murmured in cold stretches along the ground, haunting our steps, conspiring, taunting, forbidding our passage.
We pressed on.
Trees grew sparse and distant ahead. Their leaves gone. Briary branches reached out like skeletal arms through the darkened landscape, catching thin wisps of wind and relinquishing them in faint whistles.
Beyond the trees stood a large clearing with car-sized boulders forming a neat Stonehenge-like circle around it. We approached the circle, crouching behind one of the larger boulders just five yards from where a dozen armed men had gathered before a large wooden crate. A few had hatchets. Others had swords or similar weaponry.
Fifteen yards back, a hundred or so spectators assembled on blankets, chairs and cots. Small campfires dotted their line of demarcation.
The men with the weapons had their backs toward us, their attention focused on one of their own, a young warrior, armed only with a wooden spear and a molded shield.
He stood defiant before the crate, his muscles hard and lean; his body shaved, oiled and heavily tattooed. He appeared battle-ready, though something told me he’d need more than a sharpened toothpick and trash can lid to battle whatever was inside that crate.
I scooted up next to Tony and whispered, “What do you think’s in there?”
“The crate?”
I backhanded him on the shoulder. “No. His shorts. Yes, the crate.”
He shrugged. “Don’t know… a bear?”
I looked again at the crate. It was eight feet high by four-foot wide. “A bear? You gonna stick with that answer?”
“Hell, Lilith! I don’t know. Maybe a lion. A tiger. What do you think it is?”
“None of the above.”
The men with weapons opened the door on the crate. The crowd reeled in a collective gasp, which was a good thing, because the gasp that we let out would have surely given us away otherwise.
So how do I describe the monstrosity that came out of that crate? I can’t, it’s impossible. The one-eyed, horned-headed, hunched-back, monster with saber-tooth fangs, hooked claws, and bellowed muscles was just too damn hideous to…. Oh, wait. I guess I just did. Doesn’t matter. Even that description can’t do this creature justice. It was that repulsive.
After catching my breath and pulling my talons out of Tony’s arm, I asked him, not so quietly, “What the fuck is that!”
He turned to me, his eyes unbelievably wide. “You’re asking me?” I realized then he was squeezing my arm nearly as tightly as I had been squeezing his.
“No! I’m just saying. What the fuck is that!”
“I’ll tell you what it ain’t,” said Carlos. “It definitely ain’t something you’d find in Kansas.”
“Enough with Kansas, will you?”
“I’m just saying.”
At the risk of someone spotting us, we all slid around the boulder for a better look. Though the creature was free to wander some, a twenty-foot chain around its ankle kept him tethered securely to the crate.
Perhaps that was the only advantage afforded the young gladiator who approached the beast on flexed knees, his spear tip angled downward, his shield raised.
He was scared, I could tell, and reluctant to get too close at first, but the cheering crowd inflated his confidence and built his bravado. He stepped closer, jabbing his spear, though still too far from the creature to affect anything more than a menacing gesture.
Oh, but the spectators loved it. They rooted him on, and between their ruckus and the young man’s advance, I could see the creature’s aggression escalating by degrees. It lumbered forward before lunging at him, dragging the heavy crate by its chain through the dirt.
The fighter fell back. The spectators booed. He tossed his shield aside and two-handed his spear low on the shaft. The crowd rewarded him with another wave of cheers. He steadied his aim, lowered his head and charged the beast, impaling its mid-section with the spear tip and running it clear through the other side.
The beast howled in agony. The vindicated gladiator, still holding his spear with two hands flush against the creature’s belly, looked out at the crowd and smiled. He then gave the spear a twist and another jab. The spectators approved.
It was all over then, but for the creature’s say in the matter.
The hulking beast reached down with its massive hands, wrapped its claws around the man’s head and ripped it off his body. The crowd loved it, switching their allegiance to the creature and rewarding it with applause.
The creature tossed the head over its shoulder and thumped his chest like a gorilla. We watched the head sail over us and land with a thud in the tall grass behind us.
Still, the beast wasn’t finished. He picked the gladiator’s limp body up off the ground and shredded the arms and legs from its torso as if plucking petals from a flower. It then tossed the appendages into the cheering crowd and discarded the bloodied torso into a nearby fire.
The spectators roared. The creature pumped his fists up over his head and returned to the crate victoriously. The swordsmen shut the big wooden door and began collecting bets for the next round.
“Well,” I said. “That was some show.”
Tony and Carlos shook their heads in disbelief. Ursula, the poor thing, was mortified. She fell back against the boulder and began to sob. I went to comfort her. Tony and Carlos joined us.
“Don’t cry,” I said to her. “You have to remember why these people are here. They’re all evil. They deserve a horrific end.”
She looked up through tear-filled eyes. “`Tis not for him I cry, but for my Dominic.”
“Oh, you miss him, eh?”
“Aye, what ye say is true. Uneasy lies the heart that misses the one it loves.”
Carlos took her hand. “Don’t worry, Ursula. You’ll see him soon. We’ll all be home before you know it.”
She shook her head softly.
“What?” I said. “Why are you shaking your head?”
“`Tis a feeling, is all.”
“What feeling?”
She thinned her lips.
“Ursula.”
Her gaze fell to a lonely place out in the darkness. “I fear we shall not return. But I have my Dominic in my heart, and in that I shall find comfort no matter the distance between us.”
“Nonsense. You’ll see Dominic again. You hear me? You’ll get back. We’ll all get back. I promise.”
&nbs
p; She nodded, accepting my words, but not entirely believing them. I would have pressed my case further, if not for a muffled cry that caught our attention. It came from out in the field a few feet away.
Tony raised his bayonet and started toward the sound. “I’ll go and check it out. Don’t anyone follow me.”
Naturally, we followed him.
We found the source of the anguished cries: the young gladiator’s head. It had come to rest in the field, face down. He seemed pissed, bitching about something, though I can’t say I blamed him. Already, ants had begun feeding on the back of his skull.
Tony stuck the tip of his bayonet in the man’s ear and rolled the head over. It looked up at us through squinted eyes, its mouth spitting out clumps of grass and dirt that had lodged between its teeth.
“So,” he said to us. “Did I kill it? Is it dead?”
I shook my head. “No, not so much, I’m afraid.”
He seemed disappointed. “It’s not dead? The motherfuckin` malodyte.”
“What did you call it?”
“Malodyte. That’s what that was you know, the fiercest creatures on the planet. You sure I didn’t kill it?”
I started to assure him that he most certainly did not, when Ursula interrupted.
“Aye, at first thou had but wounded it only. `Twas that last twist of your spear what did him in. Be that not true, so say you all?”
“Oh, yeah, sure,” I said. “That last twist, man, that’s what did it. Brilliant.”
“Of course,” said Tony. “I saw it.”
Carlos said, “Yeah, he went down right after he ripped your head off.”
“Carlos!” Tony elbowed him in the side, but it didn’t matter. The head seemed pleased with what he heard.
“So listen,” I said, “I see you guys don’t die so easily around here. What’ll become of you?”
He hooked his brow, which I understood to be a shrug of sorts. “I guess I’ll just lie around here for a while. Sure will miss the games, though.”
“The games?”
“The malodyte fights. You know I’m entitled to a thousand difermium pellets for killing it.”
“Well, que sera, sera,” I said.
“Yeah, it’s too bad I can’t collect. My brother, Frank, could sure use it.”
“You have a brother, Frank?” asked Tony.
“Yeah, Frank James. Second quickest gun in the west. I’m the first, of course.”
“I’m sure. So, your brother’s here with you?”
“He is, but I reckon he’ll be plenty angry with me now that I got myself all tore up like this.”
I could see where Tony was going. “You wouldn’t by any chance be Jesse James, would you?”
“I would.” The head turned up a cocky grin.
“The Jesse James?”
“The one and only.”
I saw Tony give Carlos that look again, the one that makes me think they share a telepathic bond sometimes. Carlos took his cue from that, leaned over Jesse’s head and said, “You know, Jess. We might be able to get that prize money to your brother if you help us with a little problem we’re having.”
The head laughed. “I hope you don’t want me to help you rob a stage coach or anything, because as you can see, my head’s just not in it today.”
Ursula thought that was funny. She tried stifling her laugh through splayed fingers, but it came out in sputtered snorts. It was good to hear it, and I let her know that with a little wink.
Carlos said, “Jess, we’re trying to find a man who is probably well known around these parts. His name is Dr. Lowell. Do you know him?”
Jesse’s expression grew noticeably curious. “You mean Lord Lowell?”
“Lord Lowell?” said Tony. It sounded even stranger coming from him.
“Yeah, the old guy, right?”
“He’s older, yeah,” Carlos said. “Not ancient.”
“Right, but he’s old like you.”
“I’m not old. I’m mature.”
Tony tapped Carlos on the arm. “I’ll handle this. Jesse, do you know where we can find Lord Lowell?”
“Sure. Everyone knows where to find Lord Lowell. He’s up in his fortress.”
“What fortress?”
“Are you serious? The Dark Fortress, of course.”
“How do we find it?”
“Boy, you are new around here, aren’t you?”
“Please, just answer the question.”
“All right, but you promise me you’ll get the difermium pellets to my brother, Frank, right?”
“Yes, as soon as they give us the pellets, we’ll get them to Frank.”
“Okay then. You’ll find the Dark Fortress on the other side of the Dark Forest.”
“That’s a lot of dark places,” said Carlos. “I don’t like dark places.”
Tony let it ride. “How do we get to the Dark Forest?”
Jesse rolled his eyes off to the left. “Is that the way to the malodyte crate?”
“Yes.”
He rolled his eyes in the other direction. “Then the Dark Forest is that way.”
“You sure?”
“Of course.”
“All right then. Thanks.”
“You’ll have to be careful though. The Dark Forest is home to the malodytes.”
“What, those things?” Tony looked back over his shoulder at the giant crate.
“Yeah. They’re thick as thieves out there and they guard the fortress for Lord Lowell.”
“Okay. Thanks again. You’ve been a big help. We appreciate it.”
“What about Frank? You will get the pellets to him, won’t you?”
Tony shook his head. “No. I don’t think so, partner.”
“Why not? I told you what you wanted to know.”
Carlos leaned in gave Jesse a love tap on the cheek. “Because we’re cops,” he said. “We just don’t roll that way.”
Chapter Seven
Night was falling as we neared the outer edge of the Dark Forest. Of course, you couldn’t tell by the setting suns. Black suns in a black sky leave no visible trace of their migration.
What gives it away is the temperature drop. And by the time we decided to make camp for the night, the cold that settled in had us all shivering in our boots... or rather, our moccasins.
“We’ll sleep there tonight,” I said, pointing to a cluster of jagged boulders forming a neat semi-circle in the sand. “They’ll offer good protection from the wind.” I pitched my ear toward the tree line, beyond which was too dark to see even the next row of trees. “I hear water. Might be a stream. With luck, the water’s clean and drinkable.”
“Aye,” said Ursula. “Methinks I hear it, too.”
“Might be fish in it,” said Carlos, rubbing his stomach. “I could eat. I’m starving.”
“We all could eat,” I said. “But right now we need to think about staying warm. Let’s start collecting some firewood first.”
I began picking up what measly twigs I could find scattered at my feet. Tony took the challenge more seriously. He snapped his fingers to get Carlos’s attention, and the two of them went off into the woods. After a while of silent gathering, Ursula and I stacked our modest collection of kindling into a pile.
“There. That’s a good start,” I said to her. “Don’t you think?”
“Aye, `tis that. I shall like to see a fire again. Mayhaps it shall remind me of home.”
By home, I knew she meant back in seventeenth century New Castle. I had almost forgotten that she spent all but the last couple of years of her life in days of simple means, such as that offered in the ES.
Back then, she did all her cooking over an open fire, stonewashed her laundry in an icy river, carried water from a well and did her business in a detached outhouse, even in the dead of winter. For Ursula, the ES was probably not so foreign a place as it was to the rest of us.
“It’s going to get cold tonight,” I said, almost under my breath. “A fire will be nice.”
I laughed. “Don’t you mean tits?”
She looked at me strangely, as if contemplating the adjustment in meaning. A moment passed before she gasped and smiled upon her discovery. “Aye! Tits! What more sense that makes.”
“Does when I’m freezing my tits off.”
Oh, how we laughed then, I mean really laughed. It felt good seeing Ursula express an emotion so profoundly genuine and happy, something I hadn’t seen since she lost her baby. I skirted the pile of kindling, hurried to her and gave her the biggest hug.
We were still laughing when the boys came running back, half-frenetic and out of breath. Tony was the worse, wielding a piece of wood over his head like a club.
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
Carlos had one, too, only his club was more twig than branch. I imagined he thought Tony would knock our attacker unconscious first, and then he`d poke the bastard’s eyes out.
“Tony! Please.” I let go of Ursula and splayed my hands to stop him. “Nothing’s wrong. We’re fine.”
“You screamed. We heard you. We thought you were under attack.”
Ursula said, “We were freezing our tits.”
“What?”
I coaxed the club from his hand. “Nothing. We’re not freezing anything. Sorry. False alarm. That’s a nice piece of firewood. Now go back and get the rest of the tree. We’re gonna need it. We have a long night ahead of us.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure. Now go.” I reached out and took the twig from Carlos. “You, too.” I gave his stick a pathetic look before tossing it in with the rest of the kindling. I didn’t say anything to him. I didn’t have to. He volunteered on his own.
“For the record,” he said, pointing at the branch Tony brought back. “I saw that piece first.”
I patted him on the back, turned him around and nudged towards the trees. “I’m sure you did. Now just remember, good wood is hard to find, but hard wood is good to find. Especially in the morning.”
He took a few steps before stopping and turning back around. “Are you talking about firewood?”
8 Gone is the Witch Page 8