by E. G. Foley
“He’s good,” Gladwin admitted.
But Dani held her breath as the witch turned and spotted the Guardian barreling toward her with his blade.
She raised her wand to hurl a blue bolt at Derek (who did not slow his pace, prepared to self-destruct in his duty, it seemed), but Jake saw, too, and with a shout, zapped the wand right out of the witch’s hand with his telekinesis.
Her wand flew clear across the ballroom, end over end.
And this did not make her happy.
The beautiful witch stared at Jake; lifting her arms out to her sides, she began to chant.
And grow.
Dani cupped her hands close to her chest, protecting Gladwin. They both watched in horror as the witch transformed herself into a sea monster, some sort of hideous, gigantic squid or octopus—except that it still had a vaguely human, female face, with painted lips.
Giant tentacles and thick muscled arms covered in suction cups filled the ballroom, thrashing, coiling, and flailing like a mad carousel, trying to knock Jake and his flying mount out of the air.
One arm blocked the broken window to stop them from escaping. Another grabbed for Derek’s waist, but he leaped out of the way, then ran to protect the guests, exchanging his bowie knife for his sword. He slashed at any giant slimy arm that came reaching for the guests.
But the sea-monster’s main target was Jake and his flying lion-thing. “What is that?” Dani cried to Gladwin over the uproar.
“It’s Fionnula Coralbroom, the sea-witch! She’s turned herself into a Kraken!”
“I meant the thing Jake’s riding on!”
“You don’t know a Gryphon when you see one, child?”
Before Dani could answer, she yelped and had to hit the deck as one of the giant arms swept by overhead.
Then, to her surprise, when she landed on the floor, she found herself face-to-face with the largest spider she had ever seen.
“Ahhhh!” it shrieked when it saw her, more afraid of her than she was of it. It scuttled away from her toward the wall. “Master! Where is Master? Malwort is coming, Master! Malwort will save you!”
The spider jumped sideways onto the wall.
Dani stared in shock. Did that thing just talk?
But before it could get away, Gladwin leaned out and blew a handful of sparkling gold dust at the spider.
Malwort fell unconscious to the floor.
Thump.
“Ha!” the fairy said in satisfaction. “Step on it, won’t you?”
“I’m not touching that thing!” Dani exclaimed.
“Kill it, quickly!”
“What? It’s bigger than my foot!”
The spider recovered from the fairy-dust with a cough, then shot out a line of web and pulled itself straight up. It swung to the wall to avoid the flailing arms of the terrible Kraken. “Coming, Master! Be brave! Malwort will saaaaave yooooou!”
Dani could not believe she had just heard a spider talk. She wouldn’t admit it to Gladwin, but she wouldn’t have killed it even if she could.
It was sort of cute.
She could still hear the spider yelling its head off for “Master” as it bounded, swung, and jumped from chandelier to chandelier, bravely whizzing to the right and the left to avoid colliding with the Kraken’s arms or the Gryphon soaring past.
She realized who “Master” was when the spider took a last, great, hurling leap off the fourth chandelier and landed on Waldrick Everton’s shoulder.
He had just crawled out from underneath the dessert table and was trying to get away.
Derek spotted him and charged.
Waldrick spun around to yell to his servants, “Stop him!”
To Dani’s dismay, a dozen footmen and maids all began circling Derek. He brought up his sword, warning them off, but Dani knew he was bluffing. He was a Guardian; he wouldn’t, couldn’t hurt them. They were unarmed working people, after all.
Meanwhile, Waldrick ran, his loyal spider perched on his shoulder.
“Where’s he going?” Dani murmured, watching Jake’s wicked uncle running the perimeter of the room like it was an obstacle course, hopping over side-chairs, scaling refreshment tables, swinging from the heavy velvet curtains, and ducking the Kraken’s giant octopus arms, rolling away.
The sea-monster barely noticed him, determined to grab Jake and the Gryphon out of the air.
Then Gladwin and Dani realized where Waldrick Everton was going. The wild-eyed former earl reached the bottom of the red-carpeted stairs and began taking them two at a time, heading straight for them, his perfect hair rumpled, his fine clothes mussed.
“He’s insane,” Gladwin warned. “Dani, run!”
But Dani O’Dell felt all her Irish fight rising up inside her. “Not hardly. He’s not gettin’ away. You got more o’ that dust?”
“He’s too tall! It only works if you get it in the face!”
“Well, then. It’s up to me.” She slipped Gladwin safely into the pocket of her pinafore, then rolled up her sleeves and took a stance to kick the lout back down the steps for what he’d done to Jake and Gladwin—and to her, with all his hurtful insults about “commoners.”
“Hold on, Gladwin.” Eyes blazing with rookery spirit, Dani put up her fists and waited for the madman to charge, and would’ve made her brawling brothers proud to see her in that moment.
For she didn’t budge an inch.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
A Shocking Claim
Red was tiring. Jake could understand why. After being chained to the ground for years down in that dark cell, the Gryphon’s wings, though strong, were out of practice for such intense flying. Jake urged him on the best he could and held on for dear life to the iron collar. Red was using all his speed, strength, and agility to keep them both clear of the Kraken’s grabbing tentacles. The thick, slimy arms were everywhere, another muscled arm cartwheeling at them at top speed as soon as they cleared the last.
Jake sent a few shots of his telekinesis at the center of the Kraken-Fionnula, but his efforts glanced off the monster’s huge, bulbous head.
After using his powers so many times already tonight, he noticed that he was feeling some of the aftereffects that he used to get from exerting his supernatural talents.
It seemed ages since he’d had one of those throbbing, woozy headaches, but he could feel another one coming on.
The whack in the head from Uncle Waldrick’s fire poker hadn’t helped matters, nor did Red’s crazy, weaving patterns to escape the Kraken’s clutches. Jake felt queasy but forced himself to hold on tight to the collar as Red darted and swooped more like a swallow than an eagle, banking one way then the other on an unpredictable path.
Another mighty arm whipped toward them; Red plunged, pounced off the ballroom floor, and leaped into the air again. But Jake wondered how much longer the Gryphon could keep up these heroics.
He wasn’t sure himself how much longer he could stay astride the animal. His arms were burning from clinging to the Gryphon’s collar with all his strength.
He wished they could get out of the building, but every time Red zoomed toward the broken window to escape, Fionnula covered it up with one of her arms. They were trapped in here with her.
Finally, disaster struck. Fionnula got her lucky break. Neither Jake nor the Gryphon saw the tentacle quietly sneaking up from straight below them, rising to ensnare them.
The next thing he knew, it coiled around them both like a giant, slimy, implacable snake as thick as a tree. It wrapped around Red’s lion middle and squashed Jake into place. The Gryphon screamed, pulled off course.
The sudden whip to the side mid-flight made Jake bite the inside of his mouth so hard he tasted blood. Red began clawing furiously at the suctioned tentacle pulling them toward the Kraken’s mouth.
They fought for all they were worth, Jake punching the octopus arm, Red tearing it with his beak.
Jake was pinned on the struggling Gryphon’s back, but when he looked down and saw the Fionnula-Krak
en smiling cruelly at them, he started screaming for Derek.
The monstrous Fionnula giggled like a flirt, dangling him and the Gryphon over her painted lips.
Her eyes were still recognizable in the hideous, giant face, and they shone with glazed, mad hunger. “Now I will eat all of the Gryphon feathers at once, and be beautiful forever!”
She opened her mouth, revealing a huge, round, horrible maw, with rows of churning teeth. An overwhelming stink of dead fish poured out on her breath.
Red beat his wings as hard as he could, roaring in the Kraken’s face. In the last possible second, the Gryphon lashed out in fury with the curved sabers of his lion-claws and slashed Fionnula’s cheek open. Four deep cuts caught the corner of her eye.
“My face!” she shrieked and hurled them away in rage.
She sent them both crashing against the ballroom wall. Jake and the Gryphon separated as they hurtled helplessly through the air.
Jake planted his face in the wall some yards above the ballroom; the Gryphon beside him made a considerably louder bang as he hit.
Then Jake saw the floor rushing up to meet him, and when he smashed to earth, his scattered wits said goodnight for a second and went off to dance a little minuet.
The cobwebs cleared and he shook himself awake a couple minutes later, his groggy senses returning to the chaos of the ballroom. Screaming guests. Rumpled Gryphon.
No Kraken.
Where was she?
Still seeing stars, his chest heaving, Jake looked over as Red slowly rolled over and started picking himself up. “You all right?”
“Caw.” One very unhappy mythical beast.
Scanning, Jake spotted Derek across the ballroom. All his uncle’s servitor-servants, maids, and footmen had piled on top of the Guardian and were pounding him with kicks and punches. But all of a sudden, they turned back into forks and spoons and rained down over Derek, clattering harmlessly to the floor.
That’s odd.
Looking puzzled but relieved, Derek brushed them off and jumped to his feet, running toward the grand staircase in pursuit of Waldrick.
But a woozy grin spread over Jake’s face when he saw his uncle at the top of the red-carpeted stairs.
It appeared the carrot-head had matters well in hand.
Dani kicked Waldrick in the knee, and when he lurched forward with an “Oof!” Gladwin blew fairy-dust in his face.
Waldrick went silly from the fairy-dust, staggering into the bannister. Derek ran to take him into custody. But what about Fionnula?
Jake scanned the ballroom and spotted her—getting away! But she was making slow progress, changed back into her true form.
So that’s why the servants had turned into utensils, he thought. They were servitors and she was the one who had made them. But she was losing power fast after the slash of the Gryphon’s claws. It seemed what the Gryphon’s magic could give, it could also take away.
The sea-witch had used Red’s stolen feathers to restore her beauty, but apparently the cut from his claws had drained his magic out of her—or maybe had taken it back.
All Jake knew was that she wasn’t getting away. She was as guilty as Waldrick was in the murder of his parents, and she had to pay.
He climbed to his feet and jogged after her.
Hurt, Fionnula wasn’t moving very fast.
She was on the ground in all her hideous, squiggly glory, half-squid, half warty old hag. Propped on her flabby, old-woman arms, she was trying to drag herself out of the ballroom while the horrified guests looked on.
“What’s wrong with her?”
“Somebody do something!”
“Curses on you all!” she spat at them in her charming way. “Waldrick! Useless man! Nincompoop! Helllllp me! Waldrick! HELP ME!”
“There’s no one to help you now!” Jake declared as he stepped in front of her, blocking her way.
Her face was bleeding with an odd-colored, slimy blood from the cut on her face where Red had got her. “Wicked boy! Atrocious, ungrateful, little fiend! Get out of my way or I’ll—”
“Or you’ll what?” Jake stood tall before her, resting his hands on his hips. “Try to eat us again?”
Bracing herself weakly on one hand, she lifted her wand in the other, having retrieved it and started an incantation. But Jake reached down, snatched the wand out of her grasp and this time, broke it over his knee.
“You’re finished,” he informed her, and threw the pieces on the ground. “I’m putting you under arrest—in the name of the Order of the Yew Tree,” he tossed out, a rather bold experiment.
She let out a weary cackle. “Is that so, my lord?”
“I know what you did. You’re a co-conspirator in all of Waldrick’s crimes! You provided the magic that helped him murder my parents. He wanted the title, but you wanted to get your hands on our Gryphon, knowing his magic feathers could break your curse and, at least temporarily, give you back your beauty. But you know what, Madame Coralbroom? There’s not enough magic in the world to hide your true ugliness. You were always ugly on the inside.”
“You think you know what’s going on, you stupid boy?” Fionnula mocked, glaring at him. “The Order of the Yew Tree, he says! How quaint! You have no idea what you’re up against, lordling. Now stand aside—unless you want to end up like your parents. The Lightriders are doomed, all of them!”
“What do you mean by that?” he demanded.
“Wouldn’t you like to know,” she said with a sneer.
Jake stepped to the side to block her when she tried to crawl around him.
“Out of my way!”
“Explain what you meant by that. Is somebody plotting against the Lightriders? The Dark Druids?” he tested her. “I’ve heard a rumor that you’re working with them.”
She laughed at him. “Little fool!” But then she eyed him with cunning. “I can answer all your questions if you’ll help me reach the river. That is, if you want to know what really happened to your parents.”
“I know what happened to them. I saw it in Waldrick’s memories through the Oboedire spell you cast on me.”
“You think I let that fool know what’s really going on? Stupid boy, a smart girl lets her man think he knows what’s what, while in truth, she’s carrying out her own designs.”
“What are you saying?”
“Those bullets I gave him…”
“Yes?” he prompted, going down on one knee to stare into her face. “Tell me! What about them?”
“Haven’t you ever wondered why I went to the trouble of turning your family servants into frogs?”
“To cover your tracks!”
“Don’t be a simpleton like your uncle. More than that.”
“You’d better start talking, you hag.”
“Help me into the river,” she said, “and all will be revealed.”
“No, now!” Jake held his breath and warned himself not to believe too much of anything she might say. She was cruel, she was desperate, and she had already proven herself a liar.
“Very well.” Fionnula smiled coldly. “Maybe they’re not quite as dead as you think.”
“What are you talking about?” he breathed.
Before she could answer, Dani’s frantic, high-pitched scream drew his attention: “Jake!”
He cast a fierce glance over his shoulder, annoyed at the interruption. Then he froze.
“Jake! Help! Help me! Please!”
At the top of the grand staircase, Uncle Waldrick was dangling Dani off the high balcony by her arm.
“Stay back!” the madman shouted at Derek, who was trying to arrest him. “Take one step closer and she dies! She’ll break her neck! Splatter her brains all over the floor! And it will be all your fault, Guardian—again!”
Not hardly. Jake rose to his feet, his eyes narrowed.
“Red!”
The Gryphon was by his side in a pounce.
Whatever Fionnula knew about his parents would have to wait. He did not want to interrupt this co
nversation, but Dani’s life was at stake—Gladwin’s, too.
As he jumped on the Gryphon’s back, he saw the fairy hanging onto the edge of Dani’s pocket for dear life.
Since Gladwin couldn’t fly anymore, she would fall off the balcony and die, just like Dani, if Jake didn’t save them.
Meanwhile, Derek was trying to reason with Waldrick. “Don’t harm the child, man—”
“Get out of my way, then! Move!”
“Easy. I’m moving. All right? Set them down safely and you can go. I won’t stop you. You see? You win.”
Jake knew it didn’t matter if Derek gave in.
Waldrick was too cruel to care, and with his plans in tatters around him, he had nothing left to lose.
Jake knew his uncle well enough by now to know that Dani and Gladwin were doomed either way.
“Hurry, boy,” Jake whispered to the Gryphon.
Red unfurled his wings with a whoosh and they were airborne, soaring straight for the balcony.
“You’ve ruined me!” Waldrick yelled wildly at Derek, while the spider on his shoulder reared up, hissing at Derek, throwing string at him.
As Derek ripped it off his face, Dani saw Jake coming.
“Hold on, Gladwin!” she yelled, reaching out with her other hand as Jake and Red swooped near.
Holding on to Red’s collar with one hand, Jake reached down with the other and grasped Dani’s wrist as the Gryphon sailed by.
He yanked her free of Waldrick’s hold and pulled her onto the Gryphon’s back behind him.
“Gladwin?”
“Got her!” Dani confirmed, clamping her arms around Jake’s waist as they swept over the ballroom. “Criminy, we’re up high.”
“Ha, this is nothing,” Jake boasted.
“Fionnula’s gone!” Gladwin yelled in her tinkling voice, pointing at the floor from the safety of Dani’s pocket.
“Blimey.”
Meanwhile on the balcony, Derek knocked Waldrick out with an expert punch in the face. “Jake! Get the witch!” he yelled as he stooped to arrest the unconscious aristocrat. “Stop her before she reaches the river or we’ll never catch her!”
Jake sent him a salute and guided Red out the high, arched window through which they had first blasted into the ballroom.