Carnival of Stone: A Novella (The Soren Chase Series)

by Rob Blackwell

  Instead, his hand kept searching the trunk, desperate to find anything he could use against the gorgon. He felt something metal but couldn’t quite get a grip on it. Then his hand grasped something soft and squishy and he was surprised when he felt a sharp pain. All at once he realized what was in the trunk and started grinning.

  “What’s so funny?” Emily asked.

  “It’s not just how you look, it’s how you smell,” Soren said, still squeezing his eyes shut. “I’ve got a new perfume that I think you’ll love.”

  Soren couldn’t see her face, but he heard the outraged sound from her lips and knew she was going to kill him. It wasn’t going to be slow and painful as promised, but it was going to happen right now. Before she could do it, he brought out his hand with a squirming animal inside it.

  “It’s called ‘scent of the weasel,’” he said.

  He risked opening his eyes, trying to avoid her gaze, and thrust the weasel into the gorgon’s face. The effect was immediate. The snakes in her hair and mouth immediately retreated while the weasel went nuts. Just a moment before, it had been biting Soren’s hand, but now it strained to get at the gorgon. Soren lobbed the weasel at Emily’s head, where it immediately crawled into her hair.

  The gorgon fell back, screaming and swatting at her head in an attempt to get the thing off. Soren rolled over and pried open the trunk further.

  A cage full of weasels spilled out.

  The cage had been broken, presumably during the gorgon’s attack on the car earlier, but only a few of the animals had escaped. Soren reached into the cage and grabbed another one, tossing it in the gorgon’s direction.

  He need not have bothered. All of the weasels in the trunk—both free and caged—began straining to get to the gorgon. Several fled from the trunk and ran toward the monster, running up her tail. Soren opened the cage wider to let the others escape. Soon Emily was covered by more than a dozen of the animals, many of which had sunk their teeth into her scaly flesh.

  It was like nothing Soren had ever seen. Just as the snakes had sunk into Emily’s human body earlier to allow her to become the gorgon, now they fled from her. The smell of the weasels drove them into a frenzy and they began pulling away. The gorgon’s body appeared to unravel, coming apart piece by piece as the snakes burst from her flesh and slithered away. Her tail almost seemed to melt into dozens of snakes which quickly scattered toward the forest. Emily bent over and began retching, and Soren saw the snake which had been her tongue fall out and hit the ground.

  Her scales began to dissipate too as the snakes oozed out, leaving pink, vulnerable flesh. For a moment, Emily was half-woman, half monster, with her human legs visible but her torso still covered in a pulsating mass of snakes. It didn’t last long, however, as those snakes, too, pulled away.

  The snakes on her head never had the chance to leave. The weasels set upon them with a particular ferocity, sinking their teeth into the serpents and gnawing at them. Up until that moment, Soren had always seen weasels as slightly cuter than a rat. These weasels had long brown bodies with a touch of white fur along their bellies. But watching them attack the snakes on the gorgon’s body, they appeared like tiny monsters.

  After just a few minutes, the fight was over and the gorgon had lost. The vast majority of the snakes didn’t die, they just fled, driven away by the sight and smell of one of their traditional predators. Other snakes lay bleeding all around Emily, struggling to slither away. A few were already dead, partially eaten by the weasels.

  Emily now looked completely human. She lay on the ground, panting. She was bleeding from multiple wounds, the result of the weasels’ attack on her body. A few weasels still clung to her, biting her skin, but she barely seemed to notice. Though she appeared helpless, Soren knew that might not last. The weasels were already starting to disperse, chasing snakes into the trees. She clearly had some kind of telepathic control over the snakes and might be able to call them to return to her. If they did, Soren would lose his only chance to defeat her.

  Soren stood up and looked around on the ground, finding a large rock. He picked it up and went over to her.

  She looked weakened and scared when she saw Soren.

  “Please,” she said. “I’ll tell you what you want to know. I had help. I couldn’t have done this alone. It was a man called Rippon. He found me not long after I escaped the mountain. He wanted to help me get my children back. I can take you to him. He has other plans in the works, dangerous plans. Just let me live. I’ll tell you anything.”

  “The only thing I want to know is how to free these people from the stone,” Soren said.

  Emily shook her head.

  “You can’t,” she said. “They’re dead. It’s too late.”

  “I saw their eyes moving,” Soren said. “They must be alive for at least some time after you turn them.”

  “You imagined it!” she screamed. “You can’t save them.”

  Soren heard a hissing sound in the trees and saw snakes gathering nearby. He only had a few more moments to act.

  “Yes I can,” he said. “And I bet you know how.”

  The snakes began slithering toward Emily, streaming in from the forest, but Soren leaned down and brought the rock down on Emily’s head. He hit her several times, not even bothering to look at her but instead focusing on the snakes massing near him. He kept swinging the rock until he saw the serpents stop coming closer and move off into the trees, Emily’s control over them broken. Soren finally looked down at her bloodied body.

  The gorgon was dead.

  Chapter Twenty One

  Soren sat down in the dirt, exhausted and covered in blood.

  His chest hurt where the gorgon had scratched it and he was still panting hard from his race against the monster. He lay down and stared up at the night sky. Once again, he was the last survivor of a brutal attack.

  But a minute later, a small man in a pinstriped suit entered his field of vision, calmly aiming a gun at Soren’s face.

  “Where’s my brother?” Keevan asked.

  Soren looked up at him in confusion.

  “I thought you couldn’t speak our ‘filthy fooking language,’” Soren asked, imitating Lochlan’s accent.

  Keevan scowled, apparently not enjoying the mimicry. It was a shame, because it sounded dead-on accurate to Soren. He’d never realized he could imitate accents so well.

  “It helps if people underestimate you,” Keevan said.

  Keevan’s accent, unlike Lochlan’s, barely sounded Irish at all.

  There was shouting nearby and Keevan looked up sharply. Soren saw a couple of students crawling out of their fallen tents. One began heading in Soren’s direction.

  “Is my brother alive?” Keevan asked. “Answer me quick.”

  “He should be,” Soren said. “We struck a deal in the mine. He helped us escape if I helped kill the gorgon and save you.”

  Keevan nodded his head slowly.

  “If you’re lying to me, I’ll find you,” Keevan said.

  As a young man approached, Keevan looked in the direction of the mine and then simply vanished. Soren knew he had only teleported a short way but it didn’t make it any less jarring.

  “You could have said thank you!” Soren shouted at the trees.

  Now that the gorgon was gone, Lochlan and Keevan were at least technically his enemies, but he didn’t know how they would react to being saved by him. He thought leprechauns might have a code of honor about when someone saved their lives, but he would have to do some research.

  Soren sat up as the student approached him. It was dark out, but Soren thought he recognized the face of one of the former statues inside the professor’s tent.

  “What happened to the man who was just here?” the kid asked.

  Soren sat up and looked at him.

  “What man?” he asked.

  The student appeared momentarily flustered but apparently decided he wasn’t going to pursue it any further. He looked down at Emily, his expression u
nreadable.

  “You killed her,” he said.

  “I did,” Soren said without thinking.

  He looked over at Emily’s broken body. In her current state, she looked completely human. It occurred to Soren that this could be very bad for him. He might even be arrested for murder, unless others understood what Emily really was.

  “Good,” the student said.

  The answer surprised Soren. At least some of the students knew what had happened. If that was so, he hoped he wouldn’t end up in a jail cell.

  “Who are you? How much do you remember?” Soren asked.

  “I’m Ike,” the student said. “I remember everything. I was there when we broke through to the cavern with the eggs. That’s when we knew something wasn’t right. We were going to talk to the professor, but Jay was already talking about destroying them. Emily started freaking out. And then the snakes came. We started running, but we didn’t get far. She was too fast.”

  Ike’s voice drifted off and he wasn’t looking at Soren any longer, but staring at Emily’s corpse. Soren slowly stood up. He felt dizzy for a moment and looked down at his chest. His shirt was torn open where the gorgon had sliced at him and there were three angry red scratches on his skin. There was also a cut on his face from where Emily’s claws had raked him. Still, the pain was already receding in both places. The gorgon must not have cut him very deep. Mostly Soren just felt exhausted.

  Soren looked around for his sunglasses and found them nearby. It was dark out, but he put them on anyway, afraid he’d lose them. Besides, after what happened today, he never wanted to take them off again. He looked over at Ike.

  “You going to be okay?”

  “I was conscious the whole time,” Ike said, his voice strangely flat. “I could hear everything and barely move my eyes. I saw you in the tent. The professor almost killed her.”

  “But we stopped him,” Soren said. “We didn’t know better.”

  “Is the professor okay?”

  Soren just shook his head and Ike didn’t pursue the matter further.

  “I thought she was going to kill you too,” he said.

  “She almost did.”

  “How did you stop her?” Ike asked.

  “Trust me, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

  He scanned the woods for any sign of the weasels, but in the dark, he couldn’t see them. He would never see those creatures in the same way again. He looked over at the tents to see other students emerging. Some were milling around the campsite talking to each other. A few pointed in his direction, but Soren ignored them.

  “What about the other guy with you in the tent?” Ike asked. “Is he okay?”

  As if to answer that, Soren heard a shout from the woods.

  “Over here!” Soren called back.

  He saw Glen come out near the tents, clutching his arm and limping slightly. Soren turned to Ike.

  “You should probably head back to your classmates,” Soren said. “I’ll need to talk to them later about how to play this. If you go around claiming a gorgon turned you to stone, you’re apt to get a few funny looks and a trip to a psychiatric ward.”

  Ike nodded, still looking dazed, and headed back to the camp. As Glen neared, he seemed out of breath. Soren started to say something when he got closer, but Glen kept coming and surprised him by pulling him into a tight hug.

  Soren was too stunned to respond. Glen pulled away, seemingly unaware of Soren’s discomfort.

  “You did it!” he said. “You fucking did it. I knew you’d pull it off. At the last moment when Emily was talking to me, I just knew you’d get it done.”

  “What you did at the end there...” Soren said. “It was very brave.”

  “Hey, that almost sounded like a compliment,” Glen said, but he was smiling.

  He clapped Soren on the back again. To Soren, he looked like a man whose favorite sports team had been about to lose only to suddenly pull out a win at the last moment. Which he supposed was close to the truth. Glen looked over at Emily’s body, fully visible in the moonlight.

  “Ding dong, the gorgon’s dead,” he said. “What was in the trunk? A rocket launcher, right? I was really hoping it was a rocket launcher.”

  “A bunch of weasels,” Soren said.

  Glen stared at him, his mouth hanging open.

  “Just when I thought this day couldn’t get weirder,” he said.

  “It turns out the cockatrice and gorgon really were based on the same legend,” he replied. “The cockatrice’s weakness, the ‘scent of a weasel,’ also applied to the gorgon. When the weasels started attacking the snakes, it was enough to disrupt the hold she had over the serpents. They abandoned her, leaving her mortal and vulnerable.”

  “What did you kill her with, a hammer?” Glen asked.

  Soren pointed to the bloody rock on the ground.

  “Huh,” Glen said. “She survived some serious small arms fire and at least one grenade and gets taken down by a bunch of ferrets and a rock. Pop goes the weasel.”

  “Did you see if Lochlan was okay?” Soren asked.

  Glen nodded, but before he could respond, there was a strange popping sound and the two leprechauns appeared out of thin air next to them. Keevan was holding up his brother, who looked battered but okay. Soren took it as a good sign that neither Lochlan nor Keevan had a gun aimed at them. That had to be a first.

  “Nice of ya to ask about me,” Lochlan said. “But I’m feelin’ alright.”

  “Good to see you in one piece,” Soren told him.

  “I thought I was a right goner for sure,” Lochlan said. “But ya did it, I see. I don’t mind telling ya, I’m fooking impressed.”

  Soren chewed his lower lip. This next part was going to be tricky. There were still no guarantees the leprechauns wouldn’t try to kidnap them or force him to disclose Alex’s location. Soren thought the direct approach was the safest bet.

  “So, where do we stand?” Soren asked. “You still want to try and bring us in?”

  Soren thought he’d get some bluster from Lochlan about his use of the word “try” but the leprechaun just shook his head. He pointed at Emily, lying still in a shaft of moonlight.

  “I’ve seen what happens to those who cross ya,” Lochlan said. “I still think we could take ya, mind, but ya saved me and my brother’s life. That’s not something our people can just ignore.”

  Keevan nodded, but didn’t say anything. Apparently he was keeping up appearances in front of Glen.

  “How’s your boss going to react when you come back empty-handed?” Soren asked.

  “We’ll think of something to keep him happy,” Lochlan replied. “Keevan and I have been considering moving to another line of work anyway, maybe something a little less...”

  “Evil?” Soren asked.

  “I was going to say ‘excitin,’” Lochlan replied. “We’re nearly 500 years old. It may be time to retire.”

  Soren didn’t believe him. Some part of him liked the leprechauns, but that didn’t change the fact that they were ruthless killers. He doubted they could just “retire.” That said, if they were prepared to call a truce and let Glen and him go, he wasn’t going to argue the point.

  “And your boss?” Soren asked. “Will he send someone else after me?”

  Lochlan shook his head.

  “He doesn’t know who ya are,” the leprechaun said. “We’re trackers; that’s what we’re good at. He said he wanted us to track the boy, and that led us to ya. But the boss doesn’t know about that. All we told him was that we were headed out here because we found a lead. I didn’t want to tell him about how we let you escape the night before; that woulda been bad. Anyway, he warned us about the cockatrice. I’m still not sure how he knew about tha, but he knows a lot of things. Overall, though, without us on yer trail, he won’t find ya. He doesn’t even know to look for ya.”

  “And what kind of assurance can you give me you won’t go after the boy in some other way?” Soren asked, arching an eyebrow. �
��Cause if you’re going after him, I’d rather throw down now.”

  “Uh, Soren,” Glen said. “Let’s not be hasty.”

  But Lochlan didn’t look angry. Instead, he grinned.

  “I’ll say this for ya; ya say what you think,” Lochlan said. “As far as Keevan and I are concerned, this job is over. We’re not tracking the boy, so we’re not tracking you. I can’t guarantee the boss won’t send someone else, but as a matter of professional pride, I might make it harder for any tha do. It wouldn’t be good to tell the boss we can’t find a mark and then watch some other yob complete the job, if you know what I’m saying.”

  “And I have your word on this?”

  “C’mere, I haven’t lied to you once, Soren Chase,” Lochlan said. “But if it makes ya happy, ya have my word. Mine and Keevan’s both.”

  Keevan gave a simple nod.

  “Then there’s just one more loose thread,” Soren said.

  “The eggs,” Lochlan said.

  “Oh, God, Jay,” Glen said. “He’s still down there in the tunnel. We have to go find him.”

  “If he’s smart, he’ll stay put,” Soren said. “You told him you were coming back, and he knows now that Emily is dead. Besides, he’ll probably stay for the same reason we’re going back—we need to destroy the eggs.”

  “And Jay’s got the blasting dynamite,” Glen said.

  Soren looked at Lochlan and Keevan.

  “I could use a guide back through the tunnels, and somebody that could maybe teleport inside and place the explosives,” he said.

  “It would be our pleasure,” Lochlan said. “I’d rather not see another one of those fookers again in me lifetime. Besides, Keevan loves blowing stuff up.”

  “What about the statues? Aren’t there going to be people from the original Carnival of Stone in that cavern?” Glen asked.

  “I don’t know,” Soren said. “What did it feel like when you were stone?”

  Glen thought about this for a moment.

  “It’s hard to explain,” he said. “I mean, it was like time slowed to a crawl. I wasn’t aware of breathing and yet somehow I was okay. But I don’t know, there was also this feeling of pressure, like...”