Descendant: The Protector (The Descendant Series)

by Daniel W. Koch

  “Then, we’ll need Peter and Taddi.”

  “If it’s Elliot’s orders, then take them. But the second things get better, I want them both at the Vermont house,” Aderes barked. I got up from the sleeping bag and immediately realized the air was ice cold. A chill ran up my spine, but I didn’t bother to get warmer clothes.

  “What’s going on?” I asked. They all turned to look at me.

  “I’m taking Peter and Taddi for the time being,” JD said, smiling at me. “Aderes will be fine without them.”

  “Come on, Jason,” Aderes said grimly as she grabbed me and pulled me back into the cave. “Change your clothes so we can go.” I was just able to turn and wave goodbye to Peter and Taddi before Aderes pulled me around a corner and threw my bag at me. I couldn’t hear what Aderes said when she left me, but when I was finished getting dressed, Peter, Taddi, and JD were gone.

  “Are you ready?” Aderes asked. She still seemed very angry at JD for taking Peter and Taddi. I wasn’t entirely sure why, though; now she could go full speed, and she wouldn’t have to look after anyone but me.

  “My legs still hurt a little, but I’m ready.”

  “It’s only going to be about an hour and a half run without the others, so you should be fine.” She led me outside of the cave and threw me onto her back.

  “Well, that’s good, isn’t it?” I asked her cautiously. She wasn’t in a good mood, and I didn’t want to make her any angrier.

  “If you think not having any backup is good, then yes, it’s a great thing.” She took off without letting me say anything more. At Aderes’s speed of running, I was even colder then I had been the day before, but we reached the border of New Hampshire and Vermont in a few minutes and followed it north. An hour later, we passed close by Lancaster, New Hampshire, and Aderes came to a stop.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked her as she sat me down at the top of a large hill. The hill was surrounded with trees, and at the bottom of one side was a very old, rusted BMW. The frame was almost the only thing left, except for some steel chain that was wrapped all around it.

  “I think we’re being followed.” She walked toward the tree line on the opposite side of the hill from the BMW.

  “By who?” I whispered. She put a finger up behind her, signaling me to be quiet, and ran into the woods. As the minutes ticked by, I began to feel more and more anxious and almost worried about Aderes. I knew it was foolish to think that she could be hurt, but I didn’t think she would leave me alone this long unless something was wrong.

  Suddenly she was back, but not how I thought she would return. Her body was thrown from the trees at an inconceivable speed that made her thud when she hit the ground. In an instant, she flew to her feet in a crouched position as she hissed madly at the tree line. I watched her in awe, not bothering to look and see what was coming out of the woods until he was almost ten feet from Aderes.

  He looked to be in his mid- to late-twenties. He wore a black turtleneck sweater with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, a pair of black jeans, and black shoes. He had short, black hair with a clean, handsome face that gave me an odd attraction to him. Like his clothing, his eyes were jet black, but not like regular Dahmshed eyes. They were exactly the same as Aderes’s; the entire eye was filled with reflective darkness. He threw back his head and laughed, exposing teeth the same size that Aderes had in her mouth.

  “What are you trying to do, my dearest daughter?” Falko Van De Hemel asked Aderes. His voice was harsh and rugged, like some gun slinging outlaw from an old western.

  “I am not your daughter!” Aderes screamed in a fit of rage. “My father was a decent and honorable man!” Falko twisted his head, and a little smirk came from the corner of his mouth.

  “You became my daughter the day my teeth entered that beautiful neck of yours. And as for your voedsel father, he died just days after I knew you would stay with me forever!”

  “I always knew you had killed my parents, you filthy scum!” Aderes was growing more and more inflamed with rage. Any minute, she would explode with fury and pounce at Falko.

  “How dare you call me scum? I am the one who gave you eternal life!”

  “You’re also the one that tried to take it away!”

  “Enough of this idiocy! Give him to me, and you shall be spared.” Falko took a step in my direction, and Aderes was in front of me in a flash. “Someone’s getting a bit defensive!” he laughed. “You are risking your life for this voedsel, and you don’t even know why.”

  “I know plenty, and what I know is more than enough reason for me to die so that he can live.”

  “Get out of my way, Aderes, or you will regret this.” He took two more steps toward me, but Aderes didn’t move an inch. “Give me the voedsel, Aderes!” I didn’t know why he kept calling me a “voedsel,” but I didn’t even get a second to think about it because Aderes was pushed over the edge.

  “If you take one more step, I will not hesitate to rip your disgusting head off.” All he did was smile and lift his right foot off of the ground. He brought it down so slowly that I didn’t think he’d actually do it, but then it touched the leaves, and Aderes was gone. She crashed into Falko so hard that they both flew back down the hill and smacked into the old car. Aderes grabbed some of the thick chain that was strewn across the car and tried to wrap it around Falko’s neck, but Falko slammed his arm into her stomach, and she was lifted off her feet, landing on her back five yards from where she originally was.

  Without giving her any time to react, Falko launched himself at her. He pinned her down with one knee and went for her neck with his hands, but she was able to loop some of the chain around his forearms. Temporarily distracted by the chains on his arms, Falko wasn’t able to keep Aderes on the ground. She slid out from beneath him while pulling the chains with her, causing Falko to fall to his side. She then proceeded to fling more of the chain around his neck, legs, and torso, totally encasing him in it. He would have easily broken the chains in seconds if Aderes hadn’t kept pulling on them, so that he had to pay more attention to keeping himself upright than escaping.

  Aderes pulled him back to the abandoned car and wrapped the chains more around it to secure Falko firmly to the base, before kicking him in the head. The entire fight had only taken about five seconds, and my human brain could barely keep up. Before I knew it, Aderes was sweeping me onto her back, and we were barreling through the woods. I didn’t know why she hadn’t tried to take his head off, or why she was running from him, but I did know that the chains would be broken soon, and that he would be tight on our trail.

  I held my bag with one arm as I strangled Aderes with the other in my attempt to hold on. Unlike my previous runs with her, she was bolting in zigzag formations, probably trying to throw Falko off of our trail.

  Eventually, we made it to an open area that I could see was an abandoned town. There was no sign of life anywhere, not even Dahmshed life. Aderes tore through the paved streets, leaving small cracks as she dug her soundless feet into the ground. I took a quick look behind us just in time to see Falko running from the tree line and entering the tiny town. We had a good lead on him, and I could see he was struggling to keep up. Aderes had told me that he was more powerful then she was, but she was most definitely faster than him.

  When Aderes banked a hard left, I almost slid right off of her back, but I caught my knee on her hip and locked my grip. In front of us was a large brick wall over ten feet high that stretched far off to the left and blended into a shorter chain-link fence to the right. A sign on it told me that it had once enclosed a very large dog park.

  The wall was getting closer and closer with every second, and then Aderes leapt into the air, and we sailed over it gracefully. On the other side, she took only a few quick steps before stopping, throwing me off her back and pushing me behind her so that she stood between me and the brick wall. From where I sat, I could see that the rest of the park was surrounded by the chain-link fence. The park itself was just a wide ope
n field that met the tree line on one side and a very large hill on the side closest to me. It would have been a beautiful sight if it had been occupied by people and their dogs, and if I hadn’t been getting chased by an angry Sterk Dahmshed.

  “Stay behind me,” Aderes said quickly. “I need to fight him now, or he’ll follow us all the way to the house.”

  Falko leapt over the wall in one swift jump and landed in front of us. A split second later, he lunged. Aderes grabbed him, and they both spun around, moving so fast that they were combined together in one blur. They each threw an uncountable stream of punches and blocks so fast that I couldn’t believe even a Sterk Dahmshed could pull it off. Then, Aderes was gone in a flash, thrown hard into the wall by Falko. I stumbled back quickly, thinking that Falko would have enough time to kill me in Aderes’s distraction, but she wouldn’t let him get me that easily. She was up and attacking Falko faster then she had hit the wall. Again, they became a blur. I tried to keep up with their movements, but it was a useless task. A couple of seconds later, they crashed into the wall together, but Aderes was slightly behind, so Falko was able to pin her up against the wall by grasping both of his hands tight around her neck. She didn’t need to breathe, but it was the perfect position for Falko to tear her head off.

  Aderes grabbed his hands as he tried to push one up and one down in an attempt to kill her once and for all. She couldn’t match his strength, but she gave him enough trouble to keep him from taking her head off. Falko pulled her from the wall for a split second before smashing her as hard as he could back into it. Aderes was barely able to keep her hold on him as the wall caved in behind her. Falko pulled her off again, preparing to smash her into the wall a second time, but she flashed her leg out in a kick, and Falko flew away from her. She landed perfectly on the ground, looking a little dazed, but just as Falko hit the ground a few feet behind me, she launched herself at him, clearing the entire space between them in one swift jump. She landed next to him, and he kicked out at her. Her left hand shot out and hit his ankle, making the kick miss her by inches. Falko pushed himself to his feet with one arm, and they were locked once more in a blurred battle.

  Aderes clamped her hand onto Falko’s jaw and pushed him away from her. “Jason, what are you waiting for? Get the hell out of here! I can’t hold him off forever!” Falko knocked Aderes’s hand away and threw himself back at her. They crashed through the chain-link fence to their right and tumbled down the steep hill, still viciously attacking each other as they went. I turned and started to run in the opposite direction. I kept the wall to my left as I ran for the trees at the far end of the huge field. I felt like I was running faster than I had ever run before, but if a Dahmshed was after me, especially one like Falko, I would still never come close to outrunning it.

  A loud screech from behind me brought me back from my thoughts. I turned around as I ran but saw nothing but the hole in the fence that Aderes and Falko had made. I turned back just in time to stop myself from running into the fence in front of me. I wrapped my fingers around the chain-link and pulled myself to the top. Once there, I rolled over the metal bar and fell to the other side. I bolted into the woods, still at full speed. Adrenaline was rushing through my body, keeping my stamina up, but once that was gone I would have to stop and rest. If Aderes lost the fight, there was no hope for me; even if I could maintain my speed, Falko would catch me easily.

  After five minutes of a full-out sprint, my lungs began to burn, and the cold air was starting to sting my throat. I was also entering a very mucky area that had yet to be frozen over. My shoes were getting stuck in the mud and almost came off my feet a few times, so I slowed down to a fast walk.

  Through the trees in front of me, I could see a small clearing with a single tree in the center. Around the tree were hundreds of thick, green-leaved plants with tiny white flowers. I hurried toward the clearing as fast as I could without getting my shoes caught in the muck, but when I heard a soft hissing behind me, I broke into another sprint. My right shoe immediately was sucked from my foot, sock and all, but I didn’t slow down. Even the sudden, cold shock that rose into my bare foot as it repeatedly sunk into the wet mud didn’t cause me to pause.

  Unfortunately, Falko did slow me down. He jumped from the trees and landed in front of me, so close that I didn’t have time to stop before slamming into his rock-hard body. I bounced back and would have fallen if he hadn’t grabbed me by the collar of my jacket. He lifted me up with incredible ease and held my face close to his. He gave me an evil smile that exposed his long fangs. I tried to look away, but my eyes involuntarily locked with his. I was immediately lost in the dark abyss of his black stare.

  “I finally have you all to myself, with no more interference,” he spoke very slowly. I couldn’t say a thing back because I was still lost in his eyes. “Trust me when I tell you that I am going to make this as long and as painful as possible. Within the first minute, you will be begging for death, but it will not come!” He laughed loudly just before turning and throwing me into the air. I crashed through tons of branches before I landed in the clearing I had been running toward. Pain erupted in my back when I hit the ground. I lay there, waiting for him to come finish the job.

  Instead, I heard Falko hissing and growling fiercely just a few feet away. I winced as I sat up to see what he was doing. Right outside the clearing, Falko was shrinking back as he held his hands in front of his face, much like the Dahmshed in da Vinci’s painting. I stood up quickly, and Falko seemed to calm down a little, but he didn’t come at me.

  “How did you do that?!” he spat at me. I didn’t understand the question, but I did start to notice a strong smell. That’s when I realized the green plants with the white flowers were a fairly large area of ramsons, the oldest trick in the book for keeping back a Dahmshed, besides a cross.

  I laughed madly. I was the happiest I had ever been. The most dangerous Dahmshed that I knew of was standing only ten feet from me, but he couldn’t reach me because of a few flowers. “They’re ramsons, Falko!”

  “What?” he asked weakly. This was obviously not part of his plan to kill me and, for him, failure was not an option. He shook his head once, and then his evil smile returned. “No matter, Jason, this is only a minor setback. You can’t stay there forever, but I can stay here as long as need be.”

  “Aderes will come eventually,” I said with a smile. “And when she does, you’ll be sorry.”

  “Are you an idiot, Jason?” Falko’s smile grew wider. “Why do you think Aderes is not here already? Do you think I tied her up somewhere or knocked her out? We both know she can’t be knocked out and she can’t be restrained easily.”

  “What did you do to her?!” My own smile fell from my face, and my blood ran cold.

  “I ripped her head off, of course!”

  “That’s impossible! You’re lying!” I yelled at him. Tears were already building in my eyes, and my voice had cracked on the last word of my denial.

  “You obviously have come to know how much more powerful she is than a regular Dahmshed,” he began, “but I hate to tell you that I am much more powerful than her. Why, you ask? Because, she is merely a remake. My family line holds this power, and all I did was pass part of that power on to her. She’s only faster than me because of that stupid run of hers, but once I caught her, she was easy to kill.”

  “No!” I screamed as a tear rolled down my cheek.

  “Yes!” Falko laughed rowdily. “And now, it’s your turn!” He turned to an old oak tree on his right, wrapped both of his arms around it, and began to pull it with all of his might. At first, I thought he would have trouble with the massive tree, but then the roots gave and the tree was his. He turned toward me and lofted the giant oak across the clearing. I dove behind the one tree in the clearing as the oak crashed to the ground, right where I had been standing. I looked around the tree and saw Falko picking up large rocks. One by one, he threw them at me with full force. I ducked behind the tree again as the rocks cracked against
it. I could hear the tree begin to splinter as the rocks kept pounding on it. “Come on out, Jason! Your fate is inevitable. I will kill you by the end of this day!”

  “Never!” I yelled at the wretched creature. Then, I jumped into the tree and began to climb. I had no idea what I was doing, but there was nothing else I could do. I was only five feet up when I saw Falko fly into the top of the tree.

  “Great idea, Jason,” he said. “I wish I had thought of this.” He shot down at me from the top and grabbed the back of my coat as I tried to scramble back down. Luckily for me, Falko miscalculated the reach of the ramsons’ aroma. He screamed and dropped me. I ran a few feet from the tree before turning to watch Falko squirm with pain. The ramsons were crippling him, and he no longer had the strength to climb the tree to safety. He fell from one branch to another until only one separated him from the ground.

  “I guess you got a bit too close, huh?”

  “I will get you eventually, Jason Hook,” he said so weakly that I almost didn’t hear him. Then, he fell the rest of the way out of the tree and into the ramsons. His body twitched and writhed as he tried to free himself from the pool of white flowers. When he began using his arms to try to pull his body toward me, I decided to run and distance myself, just in case he did get out of the clearing.

  I had no help now if he got out, no help to get to the Vermont house, and no help to save Aderes.

  Chapter 9

  Simms Hill

  With the adrenaline gone and ten minutes of running behind me, I fell to the ground and sat below a large tree. My breathing was heavy, and my legs were burning with a horrible intensity. The only part of my body that wasn’t sweating was my bare foot that was still freezing from running over the cold ground. At the rate he had been going, I didn’t expect Falko to free himself for a long time, if he could at all, so I closed my eyes and didn’t worry about running any further.