Ula

by J. R. Erickson

  The branch that she had amazingly snapped with her thoughts had been the very one she'd attempted to jump to and missed. “That's vengeance for you,” she thought wryly and stared up into the trees, looking for a more suitable match. A bit further ahead, a long, thick branch snaked between two trees. It was at least ten feet lower than her previous choice, and she went for it without thought. Her recently injured leg sprang easily, her body shooting up. Branches and leaves slapped at her face, but this time she did not miss, landing on the branch with two feet firmly planted.

  Any remaining fears of height dissipated as she leapt across the tree limbs. Her sneakers slid on the wet bark, but she did not fall. Not only was she more powerful as a witch, but her balance had improved ten fold.

  A small red squirrel began to keep pace with her. He leaped from branch to branch in a group of elms to her left, his bushy tail shivering in fear and delight. A risk taker, she imagined. One of the squirrels that defended his turf at all costs. She was so distracted watching him, she nearly passed right over Tony and Vesta, but his low gravelly voice caught her attention, and she slowed, trying to quiet her movement above them.

  "You need to finish her," Vesta snapped, her fingers balled into fists. She paced the forest floor, shooting distrustful glances at Dafne's slumped figure.

  "Not yet," Tony told her quietly. "We have no tools. The ritual is the most important thing. Plus,” he grinned. “I want her to be awake. I want to see her eyes when I sink my teeth into her flesh."

  Abby could only see the top of his head, the reddish brown hair a snarled mass on his uneven scalp. His hunched frame heaved up and down with excitement. He took a few lunging steps towards Vesta, who quickly jumped out of range.

  "Stay back!" he howled, rushing at her again.

  This time Vesta stood her ground, her fists clenching and unclenching. Something was happening, Abby could feel it, like electricity in the air. Overhead the dimming sky began to darken. The sun had set far in the west, and the remaining orange caresses had slipped away, leaving a slowly blackening dusk. Abby knew that night stalked them now. The summer sun would set, releasing a navy mask poked with thousands of tiny sparkling holes. Long shadows slowly enveloped the forest floor, but Abby could still see the scene below clearly. Her night vision improved daily.

  In front of her, the small red squirrel chattered loudly. He placed a tiny, clawed foot carefully before him and pressed his bulbous nose into the air. He could smell the Vepars below, and more than that, he could smell danger. Abby watched the skin of his back crawl with fear. He looked at her for another moment and then fled, his twig-like legs sending him into the black trees beyond.

  Both of the Vepars growled now. Abby could see Vesta's sharp white teeth bared in an inhuman snarl. Her pretty face peeled away, replaced by a creature with bulging eyes and sharp skeletal cheekbones. Abby could not see Tony's face, but had no doubt that it had transformed as well. Below them, Dafne moaned, her head slowly lifting from her chest and slumping to the side.

  Tony took a step toward her, but Vesta lunged, a gurgling cry ripping from her throat as she landed on his hunched back. Dafne, awakened by the screech, started to backpedal on the forest floor, her bare heels digging into the muddy ground, her sandals lost. Her face, disoriented, fought to understand the chaos into which she'd awakened, but could not clear the fog that the venom had created.

  Abby, sensing a moment of weakness, dropped from the tree. She landed with a thud next to Dafne, bent quickly and swept her up over her shoulder like a knight in a medieval romance, though Abby felt only terror. Dafne was light, flimsy, like well-worn fabric, and Abby sprang back into the trees as Tony grasped her arrival. He had broken away from Vesta, leaving a gaping hunk of his shoulder in her mouth, and reached for Abby.

  For both the Vepars, the sight of Abby broke their murderous spell and they lunged after her as she leapt across the tree branches. They easily kept pace below her, but neither attempted to scramble into a tree behind her. She did not know if they could jump and grab her, but dared not slow and find out.

  Ahead of her, a clearing of trees appeared, and she faltered, feeling Dafne's weight shift, and almost plunged back to the forest floor. Abby bent quickly, Dafne rolled slightly down her back and then she readjusted her, wrapping her like a silk scarf around her neck. Though Dafne had initially felt weightless, Abby's shoulders began to ache and her legs trembled beneath her.

  “I have to set her down,” she thought wildly, but knew that she could not. The Vepars circled hungrily below her, like sharks frenzied by the taste of blood.

  For a moment, a splitting pain shot through her head, and she saw Faustine's frantic face floating there. His mouth moved but no sound emerged, and then she was back in the forest, the vision and the pain gone.

  Vesta had begun to crawl up the tree, and Abby realized, with relief, they could not simply jump and retrieve her, but they could climb. Vesta's long nails sank deep into the bark, her teeth grinding as she propelled herself upward.

  Abby turned to her right and jumped into another tree and then another. Clusters of thick leaves made her transport more difficult. On her back, Dafne groaned again, painfully. A tall tree stood in the distance and she felt if she could just reach it, she might be able to climb high enough to lose them. As her feet left the branch another sharp pain shot across her head. This time it was not a vision of Faustine, but a hard blast to the back of her skull. Her body bucked in the air, Dafne tumbled from her back, and she felt a spurt of blood spray onto her neck. They'd hit her with something. As she pummeled toward the ground she knew that, and, worse, she knew that Tony waited anxiously below.

  Chapter 30

  Abby came to and felt the hard ground beneath her. Time had lapsed, most likely a result of the slow moving venom that the Vepars carried in their teeth like anatomical warfare. Slimy walls rose up on either side of her, dark torches burned in black iron holders, and shadows slid across every surface. Her mind felt coated with a thin layer of fuzz, and a low buzzing droned in her ears. She turned her head to the side, a bout of nausea washing over her. Dafne was nowhere in sight, no one was. She lay alone in a cavernous room all too familiar. The same place where she had seen Vesta during one of Devin's visions. Vesta and many other Vepars. They had taken her and Dafne home.

  Far off, behind a heavy wooden door, a shrill cackle rose into the air, echoing wildly off the walls and making Abby break out in a clammy sweat. The laugh sounded like the kind of psychosis played in carnival madhouses to scare children as they walked through mirrored rooms. Abby did not recognize it, but sensed that it belonged to a Vepar and that there were many nearby.

  She struggled to a sitting position, ignoring the warnings of queasiness. Although she felt dazed, she could function and think. She could see a mark where one of them had bit her hand, but already it was almost healed. Their venom was not as strong in her. She knew it, not only by how she felt now, but also by watching Dafne. Dafne had been almost completely unconscious, but Abby was not. Her legs were shackled to the cave floor, thick metal chains wrapped around her shins, but nothing held her arms. Nothing, because they did not really believe that she would wake up anytime soon. They had discarded her, knowing that their venom circulated in her blood.

  Now what? Abby asked herself silently, studying the mostly empty room. A few other metal chains lay strewn across the floor. She tried to pull on the chains, rip them free, but they did not budge. There was no available water source, which meant she'd be weaker here, and she couldn't afford to waste time. They would hear her and they would come.

  Lying back against the dirt-caked floor, she closed her eyes and thought of Faustine. He had appeared to her out there in the trees, his face frantic and searching. Why?

  If only she could get some water, some extra source of energy. What was Dafne's sign again? Fire, the south facing Watchtower. But what did it matter if Dafne was unconscious?

  She carefully retraced her time at the castle again, se
arching out any information that might help her get free, find Dafne and then escape. She remembered Max telling her that some witches could travel through other elements while in their astral body.

  Closing her eyes, she forced herself to relax. She imagined moving easily through the slab-like walls around her, passing through other caverns. If she could find water…

  Her body began to feel weightless, and she focused her energy on that, mentally reciting the adolescent magic, 'light as a feather, stiff as a board.' She did feel light as a feather, but not stiff at all. In fact, she began to feel malleable, like pudding.

  When she opened her eyes, she was still inside of her body, but it no longer felt finite. Instead, she knew that if she sat up, she could step out of her body completely. Max had told her that it was very dangerous to leave her physical body while enemies were present, but what choice did she have?

  Sitting up was more like oozing out. She floated across the floor and entered the wall at its base, expecting a pinch or pressure, but felt nothing. Within the wall, it was dark and claustrophobic. She waved her arms in large loopy circles, dog-paddling in the walls, she thought humorlessly. Through the wall, she entered another cavernous room, same as the last, but totally empty except for shackles that hung from the walls rather than the floor.

  The next room was not empty. A long wooden table, stained with streaks of red, probably blood, stood along one wall. Old, weathered chairs surrounded it, the paint peeling from the chair-backs. Two people, one a Vepar, occupied them. The other, Tane, had his feet propped on the table. He picked vacantly at his teeth, his blond hair soft and fuzzy in the firelight. His jeans were wet and streaked with mud. Abby wondered if he'd rushed out to see Tony and Vesta's successful hunt. Next to him sat an extremely thin woman, her skin so pale that tiny blue veins streaked like cobwebs beneath it. Her hair was black, short and spiky and stood on end. She wore black leather pants and a clingy red halter-top, the bones of her chest jutting out like an accordion. The title Satan's stripper crossed Abby's mind, and if she'd had a mouth, she might have laughed. Tane whispered something in the Vepar's pointed ear and she cackled excitedly, the cackle that Abby had heard a short while ago.

  In the next room, Abby found Dafne. She hung limply, her body shackled to the wall, a small bucket beneath her. It collected a thin pool of blood that dripped ceaselessly from her right arm. The blood, which appeared to be coming from the bite mark on her wrist, trailed over her palm and down her middle finger, splashing noiselessly into the container. Tony sat across the room, saliva trickling from his scaly red lips, his glassy eyes trained on Dafne's immobile figure.

  As Abby passed before him, he looked up as if he sensed her, but quickly turned back to Dafne, engrossed in his prey.

  Drifting up, she entered a thick slab of rock that stretched on and on as if the Vepars lived in the solid rock core of the earth that scientists were always trying to penetrate. Finally, the rock began to give way to dirt, and here Abby struck gold. Well, not gold, but water. It dribbled in a slow stream, meandering through the clay and sand like a snake in the grass. She followed it eagerly, passing earthworms and ant trails, long, skinny white vines and thick tree roots. The water began to quicken and the stream grew, flooding forward as if drawn by an unseen magnetic force. She found the force moments later, a long spraying waterfall that fell out from the cliff. The cliff jutted steeply down to a black ravine, the water thick and shining like oil. The waterfall itself grew as it neared the cliff edge and spurted out in a cascading torrent that looked, to Abby, like heaven. If she could have dived, she would have, but instead she drifted lazily through the water, feeling nothing, but a low vibration inside.

  A loud thump brought her back to her body and she nearly snapped her eyes open in shock. Remembering, at the last minute, that the Vepars believed she was unconscious, she held perfectly still and prayed that they had not seen the flutter of her eyelids as she'd reentered her body.

  "I got her good." Vesta spoke loudly, boasting about the seemingly unconscious Abby on the floor.

  "Yeah, you did." Abby recognized Tane's voice. "You gonna wait for Tobias?"

  "Yes, of course," she snapped irritably. "Tobias is my creator, my …my everything."

  "Yeah," Tane agreed, but he did not sound convinced.

  To Abby, Vesta sounded like a battered woman, in love out of fear, more than anything else.

  "I doubt Tony's gonna wait," Tane joked.

  "Then he is a fool," Vesta spat.

  Abby heard her stomp from the room. Tane scurried behind her, and Abby opened her eyes slowly.

  She lay alone again, but Tane was probably right. Tony did not look like the patient type.

  The Vepars had said that Tobias was on his way.

  She did not have time to dwell on the possibilities. Instead, she focused hard, seeing the water that flowed far above her. She imagined that the rock walls were sponges that the water seeped down through. At first, she felt nothing, no pull beyond her body, only a murmuring self-doubt that turned every second into ten. Then the vibrations began, a reenactment of her first encounter with the stone slab. Perspiration broke out on her upper lip, but she ignored it, needing desperately to keep the connection forming within her. The tiny blue ball of light materialized in her head, pulsing like a lung. In her mind’s eye, the rock walls cracked, creating a tiny seam that the water quickly leached into. The pressure within the cracks grew, producing even larger fissures that flooded with water. In the room, Abby's entire body had begun to vibrate, the blue ball slipping down her spine. She could hear the water, the hiss as it fought its way toward her.

  She focused on the water, reaching out with invisible hands, pushing it mechanically toward the cavern where Dafne hung, her captor greedily awaiting his chance to devour her. The water pooled above the ceiling, toppling upon itself, the weight growing exponentially. If it had been anything but rock, it would have bowed down, giving the Vepar some warning of the danger that lay above. Instead, he saw nothing and heard nothing, too immersed in his fantasies of death and power. When the water had reached what Abby believed to be maximum capacity, she forced the entirety of her energy against it.

  The ceiling over Tony shattered, water and rock flooding into the room. He had not even thought to blink when the first slab struck him hard in the back, pitching him out of his chair and onto his hands and knees. He cried out, but too late, water poured into his mouth and throat, cutting off his cries. Within seconds, the entire room was submerged and the water, close enough to heighten Abby's strength, gave her the intensity needed to rip the chains from the ground that she lay shackled to.

  She burst from the room and into the dark hallway beyond. A single yell of surprise echoed in the distance as the water began to fill the hall and give away the mutiny occurring within the cave’s depths. The chains, still hooked to her feet, clanged metallically as she sprinted through the flood, finding Dafne's cavern easily, as the entire door frame spouted water. She wrenched it open, the outpouring of water not slowing her, but providing her with another burst of raw power. Tony thrashed wildly beneath the surface, he was struggling, but Abby knew that he would not drown. He could not be killed that way. Dafne, still unconscious, floated at the top of the water, her head barely above the surface, the binds keeping her tightly against the wall. Soon she would go under completely, but Abby had to go for Tony first.

  She did not have to swim, moving easily in the submerged room, her feet planted on the stone floor. She searched the murky water and spotted what she needed, a long, pointed piece of rock, maybe a foot in length. She grabbed for it and missed. Tony took his shot and dived into her back, but he was weak and panicky with the water thrusting him down and she merely shrugged him off. He turned and swam frantically for the doorway, water still pouring from the hole above. She grabbed him, pulled him beneath and found another shard of rock, this one dull, but maybe if she shoved hard enough…

  He jerked and turned, his face bulging as she allowe
d him above the surface. Her fist was wrapped tightly in a swath of his shirt. She was disgusted by the proximity to his swelling eyes and writhing body as she slipped the slice of rock into the hem of her pants. Panic leaked from him, making his retaliation loose and unsuccessful. He grabbed at the hand that held his shirt and pressed hard. Abby felt her bones bend and then something cracked, a blinding pain that somehow focused her attack, gave heat to the boiling energy within her. She dragged Tony toward his chair and struggled onto it, jerking both their heads above water while he kicked at her futilely, his legs rarely finding their target.

  "Where is my family?" she shrieked, her face only an inch from his, and the reek of his breath acrid in her nose.

  He flung his head toward her, snapping his teeth and narrowly missing her chin, which she jerked away swiftly. She brought up her right hand, the one that was most likely broken and also most likely healing itself, and wrapped it around his neck, her small fingers digging into his flesh. It was like molding playdough. He scowled and struggled, but she held fast.

  "My family?" she screamed again.

  His face was purple and his rapid head shakes were turning into giant sways like a ship in a stormy sea. She loosened her hand, but only enough to allow him a single gulp of air, sufficient for the breath to answer.

  "No family," he croaked. "We don't have 'em."

  It crossed her mind not to believe him, to continue squeezing until the truth popped out like a cork from a champagne bottle, but Dafne distracted her. Her head had dipped below the water, and the brief diversion gave Tony the chance that he needed. He lunged away from her, ripping free of her hand and planting a solid side-kick to her stomach. Even in his terror, his aim was spot on and she felt his foot sink into the softness of her flesh and connect. A breath rushed out and she doubled over, her head back below the water, a good place apparently, as it instantly brought her attention back fully to Tony and away from her pain.